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Sole, Filleted, with White Sauce

Filleted sole simmered in clarified butter, lemon, wine, and white sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Sole, Filleted, with White Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Fillet the sole and season the fillets with pepper, salt, nutmeg, lemon rind, and shallot.

  2. Place the fillets in a saucepan and pour the clarified butter over them.

Cook and serve

  1. Simmer for 10 minutes.

  2. Add the lemon juice and light wine, then simmer for an additional 5 minutes.

  3. Serve the fish with white sauce poured over it.

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

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

  2. Nutmeg + shallottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,019 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sole
The main protein, which becomes tender and flaky as it gently simmers.
Clarified butter
Carries heat evenly around the fillets and adds rich fat and flavour.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the buttery flavour of the fish.
Light wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the simmering liquid.
Shallot
Contributes a mild, savoury onion flavour that mellows during cooking.

The step that matters

Simmering the fillets. Simmering gently keeps the delicate sole moist and tender. Too vigorous a boil can toughen and break the flaky fillets, so keep the liquid at a low, steady simmer.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, lemon, shallot, butter, wine, sauce):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, lemon, shallot, butter, wine, sauce. 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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