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Sole Pie

A savory pie made with boiled sole, lemon, spices, bread crumbs, parsley, anchovy, and butter, topped with a crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Sole Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Boil the sole until tender.

  2. Pick the flesh from the bones.

  3. Put the bones into the cooking liquid with mace and salt, boil until only ¼ pint of liquid remains, and strain it.

Assemble and bake

  1. Mix the sole flesh with lemon peel, salt, pepper, nutmeg, bread crumbs, parsley, and anchovy.

  2. Lay this mixture in the bottom of your pie dish.

  3. Cut the flesh from large sole, remove the fins, and place it on top of the sole mixture.

  4. Pour the reserved cooking liquid over the fish, cover with the pie crust, and bake.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  5. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Eels
Provide the main fish flesh that forms the body of the pie filling.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and help bind the fish mixture so it holds together.
Anchovy
Adds a salty, savoury depth that enriches the flavour of the fish.
Pie crust
Encloses the filling and holds in the reserved liquid while baking.

The step that matters

Reducing the cooking liquid to ¼ pint. Boiling the bones in the liquid concentrates its flavour and gelatin. Stop when the stated volume remains, since over-reducing makes the liquid too strong and salty once it is poured over the fish.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, pepper, nutmeg, bread, parsley, anchovy, butter):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, pepper, nutmeg, bread, parsley, anchovy, butter. 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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