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Olives of Soles

Rolled sole fillets stuffed with fish forcemeat, battered, fried, and served with béchamel sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Fish and white wine work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 370 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Olives of Soles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fillets

  1. Fillet the soles and wipe them dry.

  2. Brush the inside of each fillet with egg white.

  3. Place a little light forcemeat made from the fish inside each fillet.

  4. Roll up the fillets and secure with a small wooden skewer.

Batter and fry

  1. In a bowl, mix flour, salt, sweet oil, white wine, and eggs to make a batter; beat well.

  2. Dip each rolled fillet into the batter.

  3. Heat lard in a pan until boiling and fry the fillets until brown.

  4. Drain the fried fillets and serve with béchamel sauce underneath.

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. Fish + white winetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together370 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + saucetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Fish + saucetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,487 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. White wine + saucetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together819 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Egg white
Binds the forcemeat and helps seal the rolled fillet while it cooks.
Flour
Forms the body of the batter that coats the fillets and crisps when fried.
Eggs
Thicken the batter and help it cling to the fish, adding richness and colour.
Sweet oil
Adds fat to the batter, tenderising its texture and aiding browning.
White wine
Thins the batter slightly and adds a light acidity and aroma.

The step that matters

Frying the rolled fillets in boiling lard. Lard must be hot enough that the batter sets and browns quickly on the outside. If the fat is too cool, the coating absorbs oil and turns greasy while the fish inside overcooks.

“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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