Skip to main content
Main

Sole Pie

A savory pie made with soles, oysters, broth, butter, and thick cream, topped with pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Nutmeg and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Sole Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Split the soles from the bones and cut the fins close.

  2. Season the fish with salt, pepper, nutmeg, and mace.

Assemble and bake

  1. Layer the seasoned soles with oysters in a pie dish.

  2. Add oyster liquor, broth, and butter to the dish.

  3. Cover with pie crust and bake until golden.

Finish and serve

  1. Once baked, pour in thick cream before serving.

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. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  5. Nutmeg + creamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 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

Soles
Provide the main fish body that cooks into the filling.
Oysters
Add briny, savoury flavour to the fish filling.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour through the filling.
Thick cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the finished pie.
Pie crust
Encloses the filling and browns in the oven for a golden top.

The step that matters

Pour in thick cream after baking. Cream added after baking stays fresh and smooth; heating it for a long time in the oven can cause it to separate or thicken unevenly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, pepper, nutmeg, butter, cream):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, pepper, nutmeg, butter, cream. 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.

You might also like

Mock Oyster SoupMock Oyster Soup21 recipesCorn FrittersCorn Fritters6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes