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Sole, Baked, with Fine Herbs

Baked sole stuffed with a parsley and herb mixture, topped with butter, lemon, and optional sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

Sole, Baked, with Fine Herbs

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 stuffing

  1. Clean, scale, and skin the sole, removing the backbone carefully.

  2. In a pan, fry the shallot and parsley with the powdered sweet herbs in butter for 5-6 minutes.

  3. Add the bread crumbs and beaten egg yolks to the pan and mix the mixture quickly.

  4. Let the mixture cool.

Stuff and bake

  1. Stuff the cooled mixture into the sole where the backbone was removed.

  2. Place the fish in a buttered baking dish.

  3. Season the fish with salt and pepper.

  4. Dredge the fish with flour.

  5. Dot the fish with small pieces of butter.

  6. Add lemon juice and water to the dish.

  7. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for 10-15 minutes, depending on size.

Make the sauce

  1. For additional sauce, melt butter and flour in a saucepan for 2 minutes.

  2. Add water and season to the sauce.

  3. Stir the sauce until boiling.

  4. Add the liquor from the sole to the sauce.

  5. Mix in a tablespoon of the fried herbs into the sauce.

  6. Remove the fish from the heat.

  7. Stir in a slice of fresh butter into the sauce until dissolved.

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. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  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. Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Sole
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking gently in its own juices and butter.
Egg yolks
Bind the bread crumb stuffing and help it set as it cooks.
Bread crumbs
Absorb butter and juices to give the stuffing body and a soft texture.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the fish and crumbs brown lightly.
Flour
Dredging lightly coats the fish, and in the sauce it thickens the liquid.
Shallot
Adds a mild onion-like sweetness and aroma when fried in butter.

The step that matters

Stuffing the sole after the mixture cools. If the egg yolks are added to a hot mixture they can scramble, and stuffing while warm may make the filling loose. Cooling lets the yolks set the crumbs into a firm stuffing that holds together in the fish during baking.

“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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