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Soles, a LA Colbert

Soles, a la Colbert, is a dish of fried soles filled with butter and served with fish essence.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and fish are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,488 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Soles, a LA Colbert

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and fry

  1. Clean and trim the soles, then wash and dry them with a clean cloth.

  2. Flour the soles and fry them until golden brown.

Fill and serve

  1. Cut them open at the back and carefully remove the backbone.

  2. Fill the inside with cold Maitre d' Hotel butter.

  3. Place the soles on their backs in a dish and pour around them an essence of fish or anchovies.

  4. Serve hot.

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. Butter + fishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Lemon + fishtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,889 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Soles
The main fish, cooked whole and then opened and filled with butter.
Flour
Forms a coating that browns and crisps during frying.
Maitre d' hotel butter
Adds richness and fat that melts into the fish as it is served hot.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and fish.
Essence of fish or anchovies
Adds concentrated fish flavour to the liquid poured around the soles.

The step that matters

Fry the floured soles until golden brown. The flour coating needs enough heat to brown and crisp, but overcooking dries the delicate flesh. Getting this balance keeps the fish moist and the coating crisp.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, fish):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Vanillafits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, fish. 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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