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Sole Au Gratin

A baked sole fillet topped with mushrooms, breadcrumbs, parsley, shallot, and lemon juice.

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

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

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Chop the parsley, shallot, and mushrooms finely.

  3. Pass the stale bread through a wire sieve to make crumbs and brown them in the oven.

  4. Wash the soles and dry them with a cloth.

  5. Remove the outside fins and skin from the soles.

Assemble and bake

  1. Grease a baking tin and sprinkle half the chopped mushrooms in it.

  2. Season with salt, pepper, and a few drops of lemon juice.

  3. Nick the soles in two or three places and place them in the tin, skin side up.

  4. Top with the remaining mushroom mixture, season again, and add a teaspoon of lemon juice.

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 + shallottop 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 + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Soles
Form the main body of the dish, cooking gently in the tin as the sole flesh turns opaque and firm.
Mushrooms
Release moisture as they cook, keeping the fish and crumbs moist in the tin.
Stale bread
Toasted crumbs add a dry, golden crust that browns on top of the dish.
Parsley
Adds fresh, green aroma and a bright herbal flavour to the mushroom layers.

The step that matters

Nick the soles in two or three places. Shallow cuts through the thick fish let heat reach the centre evenly so it cooks through without the edges drying out.

“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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