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Dkessed Fish

Fish fillets baked with a creamy lemon parsley sauce.

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 ↓

Dkessed Fish

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the fish

  1. Remove the bones and fins from the sole.

  2. Place the bones and fins in a saucepan with 2 cups of water or milk and bring to a boil.

  3. Fold the sole fillets loosely.

  4. Place the fillets on a greased baking tray.

  5. Sprinkle the fillets with salt, pepper, and lemon juice.

  6. Cover the fillets with buttered paper.

Bake and make the sauce

  1. Bake the fillets in a 350°F (175°C) oven for about 6 minutes.

  2. Melt the butter in a separate saucepan.

  3. Add the flour to the melted butter and mix well.

  4. Pour the fish stock made from the bones into the saucepan.

  5. Boil the sauce for 10 minutes.

  6. Add salt, pepper, cream, lemon juice, and chopped parsley to the sauce.

Serve

  1. Arrange the fillets on a serving dish and pour the sauce over them.

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 + peppertop 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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Sole
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking gently and staying moist under buttered paper.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when blended with melted butter and the fish stock.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour, and forms the base for the flour thickener.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the fish and sauce.

The step that matters

Blending the flour into the melted butter. The flour must be fully mixed into the fat before the liquid goes in. Starch that is not evenly blended forms lumps and the sauce will thicken unevenly.

“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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