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Boiled Sole

A simple boiled sole seasoned with salt, vinegar, onion, and peppercorns.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,226 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Boiled Sole

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. An hour before cooking, sprinkle the sole lightly with salt and place it in a dish with vinegar.

Poach and serve

  1. In a pot, combine the fish and vinegar with enough hot white stock or water to cover the sole.

  2. Add the onion and peppercorns to the pot.

  3. Let the mixture stand for 10 minutes, gradually heating it.

  4. Simmer for 5 minutes or longer if the fish is thick.

  5. Remove the sole, drain, and serve plain or with parsley sauce.

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. Vinegar + oniontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Sole
Delicate white flesh that sets gently in simmering liquid, so it stays moist and flaky.
Vinegar
Adds a sharp acidity that brightens the mild fish and its poaching liquid.
White stock or water
Gently cooks the fish evenly and keeps it moist while it poaches.
Onion
Releases mild sweetness and aroma into the poaching liquid as it simmers.

The step that matters

Keep the liquid at a gentle simmer. Heating gradually and simmering rather than boiling hard keeps the fish tender. Vigorous boiling toughens the proteins and breaks the flesh apart.

“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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