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Boiled Soles

A simple boiled sole served with parsley, lemon, and optional shrimp or lobster sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Boiled Soles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean and wash the sole carefully, cutting off the fins but do not skin it.

Poach

  1. Place the fish in a fish kettle and cover it with cold water, adding salt at a ratio of 5 lb per gallon.

  2. Bring the water to a boil, then reduce to a simmer for about 7 minutes.

  3. Drain the fish and serve on a hot napkin, garnished with parsley and lemon.

  4. Serve with shrimp or lobster sauce, and plain melted butter.

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. Fish + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,889 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Fish + parsleytop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Sole
Provides the delicate white flesh that is the main component of the dish.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the poaching water and firms the surface of the fish.

The step that matters

Bring the water to a boil, then reduce to a simmer. Simmering gently keeps the flesh tender and moist. A hard boil agitates the fish and can break it apart and toughen the proteins.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, lemon):

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Marjoramfits less well
  4. Thymefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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