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Soles with Cream Sauce

A dish of sole fillets simmered gently in cream with lemon juice, salt, cayenne, and mace.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Isabella Beeton · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,009 recipes. The science ↓

Soles with Cream Sauce

5 persons

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Skin, wash, and fillet the soles, dividing each fillet into two pieces.

  2. Lay the fillet pieces in cold salt and water, bringing the water gradually to a boil.

  3. When the water boils, remove the fish and place it in a clean stewpan.

Make the sauce and cook

  1. Cover the fish with cream.

  2. Add the seasoning (salt, cayenne, mace).

  3. Simmer very gently for ten minutes.

  4. Just before serving, add lemon juice.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

69Calories
1 gProtein
6 gFat
5 gCarbs

Counts 4 of 5 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 4 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Cream1 tbsp (15ml) heavy51
Lemonjuice of 1 lemon (48ml)12
Cayenne1 tsp (1.8g)6
Salt1 tsp (6g)0
Macenot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Isabella Beeton. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. See the original page.

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. Cream + macetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,009 recipes
  2. Lemon + macetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,315 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Cream + lemontop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,640 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Cream and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,640 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Cream
Forms a rich, smooth sauce that coats the delicate fish and keeps it moist.
Soles
The main fish, whose delicate flesh becomes tender and flaky when gently simmered.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the rich cream and balances its flavour.

The step that matters

Simmer very gently for ten minutes. Fish protein toughens and dries out when cooked too hard or too long, so a gentle simmer keeps the sole tender and moist in the cream.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, mace):

  1. Strawberryfits better
  2. Raspberryfits better
  3. Currantfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, mace. 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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