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Grilled Sole

A simple grilled sole seasoned with pepper and sea salt, basted with butter and served with parsley butter or white fish sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Grilled Sole

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Trim the fins off the sole and wipe it with a clean cloth.

  2. Season the sole with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  3. Butter the sole all over.

Grill and serve

  1. Place the sole on a grill and cook over a clear fire.

  2. Serve with parsley butter or white fish 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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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 through to flaky, tender flesh over the grill.
Butter
Adds moisture and richness, helping the fish stay juicy and encouraging gentle browning on the surface.

The step that matters

Cooking over a clear fire. Fish is delicate and sticks or dries out easily. A clean, even heat with the grill well oiled and the fish buttered helps it cook through evenly and release cleanly without burning.

“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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