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Soles Stewed in Cream

Soles stewed in sweet cream with mace, cayenne, sea salt, lemon juice, and optional lemon rind and arrowroot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Soles Stewed in Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Prepare the soles by removing the gills and rinsing them.

  2. Bring a pot of salted water to a boil and simmer the soles for 2 minutes.

  3. Remove the soles and let them drain.

Stew and serve

  1. In a wide stewpan, combine the soles with the cream, mace, cayenne, and salt.

  2. Stew the fish gently for 6 to 10 minutes until the flesh easily separates from the bones.

  3. Dish the soles and stir the lemon juice into the sauce, pouring it over the fish.

  4. Serve immediately.

  5. Optionally, boil lemon rind in the cream and add arrowroot for thickening if desired.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + arrowroottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together553 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Pepper + arrowroottop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together329 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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

Soles
Provide the main fish, whose flesh firms and separates from the bones when gently cooked.
Sweet rich cream
Forms the stewing liquid, adding richness and a silky, moist texture to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich cream sauce and balances its fattiness.
Arrowroot
Thickens the cream sauce when optionally added, giving it a smoother body.

The step that matters

Stew the fish gently. High heat or long cooking toughens fish proteins and makes the flesh dry and ragged. Gentle simmering keeps it tender and lets it separate easily from the bones.

“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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