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Baked Soles

A baked fish dish with butter, egg, breadcrumbs, parsley, sherry, lemon, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Baked Soles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean, skin, and wash the soles thoroughly, then dry them with a cloth.

  2. Brush the fish with egg and sprinkle with bread crumbs mixed with parsley.

  3. Place the soles in a large flat baking dish, skin side up, without stacking them.

Bake and serve

  1. Melt the butter and pour it over the fish, then bake for 20 minutes.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the fish gravy, sherry, lemon juice, and seasoning; bring to a boil, skim, and pour under the fish before serving.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Soles
Mild white fish that becomes flaky and tender when baked.
Egg
Binds the bread crumb coating so it adheres to the fish.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that protects the delicate fish.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, helping the coating brown and the fish stay juicy.
Sherry
Adds aromatic depth to the sauce poured under the fish.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the butter.

The step that matters

Bake for 20 minutes after pouring the butter. Fish protein sets as it heats and turns opaque and flaky; overbaking dries it out and toughens the texture, so timing matters for tender fillets.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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