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Ribbon Fillets Sole

Sole fillets seasoned with salt and lemon, coated in egg and breadcrumbs, fried until golden and served with parsley and lemon wedges.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Ribbon Fillets Sole

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Skin and fillet the sole, then wash and dry it.

  2. Cut each fillet in half lengthwise.

Coat and fry

  1. Sprinkle with coarse sea salt and lemon juice, then tie in a loose knot.

  2. Dip in beaten egg and toss in breadcrumbs.

  3. Fry in hot fat until golden brown and cooked through.

Serve

  1. Serve on a hot dish, garnished with fried parsley and lemon wedges.

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. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Egg + parsleytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,765 recipes

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

Lemon and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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

Sole fillets
Provide the delicate white flesh that is the main component of the dish.
Beaten egg
Binds the breadcrumbs to the fish so they stick during frying.
Breadcrumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating when fried in hot fat.

The step that matters

Frying in hot fat. If the fat is not hot enough, the breadcrumb coating absorbs oil and turns greasy before it browns. Fish fried in fat that is too hot can brown outside before the flesh cooks through, so the heat should be steady.

“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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