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Baked Soles

Baked soles with butter, breadcrumbs, herbs, and a sherry‑lemon gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley 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

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the fish

  1. Clean the fish, skin the fish, and wash the fish thoroughly.

  2. Dry the fish with a cloth.

Bake

  1. Place the fish in a well-buttered baking dish, white side up.

  2. Sprinkle the fish with bread-crumbs mixed with minced parsley.

  3. Melt the butter and pour the melted butter over the fish.

  4. Bake the fish for 20 minutes at 400°F (200°C).

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Combine the gravy from the fish with the sherry, lemon juice, and seasoning.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Skim the surface of the gravy.

  4. Pour the gravy under the fish.

  5. Sprinkle reserved crumbs on top.

  6. Garnish with cut lemon and parsley.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Bread + sherrytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together682 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Soles
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking to a flaky, tender texture.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, helping the fish stay tender while it bakes.
Browned bread-crumbs
Forms a golden, crisp topping that adds texture and browning.
Sherry
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the pan gravy.

The step that matters

Skim the surface of the gravy. Skimming removes fat and loose particles from the pan juices, so the sauce stays clear and light rather than greasy. Boiling the mixture first lets these rise to the surface where they can be removed.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, bread, parsley, sherry):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Plumfits less well
  4. Apricotfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, bread, parsley, sherry. 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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