Name: Soles Stewed in Cream
Ingredients: 3 or 4 fresh soles; ½ cup sweet rich cream; ¼ teaspoon pounded mace; ¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; juice of ½ lemon; optional: lemon rind, 1 teaspoon arrowroot mixed with a little milk

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

3 or 4 fresh soles
½ cup sweet rich cream
¼ teaspoon pounded mace
¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper
¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt
juice of ½ lemon
optional: lemon rind, 1 teaspoon arrowroot mixed with a little milk

Directions

Prepare the fish

Remove the gills from the soles and rinse the soles.
Bring a pot of salted water to a boil, simmer the soles for 2 minutes, then remove them and let them drain.

Stew and serve

Add the soles to a wide stewpan and cover them with cream.
Season the cream with mace, cayenne, and salt.
Stew the fish gently for 6 to 10 minutes until the flesh separates from the bones.
Dish the soles.
Stir lemon juice into the sauce, pour the sauce over the fish, and serve immediately.

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.

Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Lemon + arrowroottop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together553 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Pepper + arrowroottop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together329 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together19,053 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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: Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender and flaking as they stew.
Sweet rich cream: Forms the sauce, adding richness and a smooth, mellow body as it gently reduces.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the rich cream and balances its flavour.
Mace: Adds a warm, aromatic spice note to the cream sauce.

The step that matters

Stew the fish gently. Cream can curdle or scorch if it boils hard, and fish turns dry and tough when overcooked. Gentle heat lets the flesh cook through and separate from the bones while the sauce stays smooth.

“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.

Lemon Sauce236 recipes

Arrowroot Gruel37 recipes

Tomato Soup526 recipes

Brown Bread461 recipes

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Soles Stewed in Cream