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Consomme De Soles

A clear fish consommé made from sole fillets, stock, herbs, and spices.

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 ↓

Consomme De Soles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the fillets from the soles and cut them into penny-sized pieces.

  2. Place the bones and trimmings of the soles in a saucepan with the stock.

Make the consommé

  1. Add parsley, celery, pepper, mace, cloves, lemon peel, and salt if needed.

  2. Boil for one hour, then strain the liquid.

  3. In the strained liquid, boil the filleted soles until cooked.

Serve

  1. Serve with a few sprigs of parsley or chervil added just 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 + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  5. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Soles
Provide the fish flavour and the delicate pieces that are cooked in the broth.
Plain white stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour of the dish.
Celery
Adds a savoury, aromatic background to the stock as it simmers.

The step that matters

Boil for one hour, then strain the liquid. Simmering the bones and aromatics extracts flavour gradually, while a gentle boil keeps the liquid clear. Vigorous boiling clouds the stock and makes straining less effective.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, celery, pepper, clove, lemon):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, celery, pepper, clove, 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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