Name: Sole a LA Colbert
Ingredients: 1 sole; maitre-d'hôtel butter; fried parsley; lemon

Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Sole a LA Colbert

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

1 sole
maitre-d'hôtel butter
fried parsley
lemon

Directions

Prepare and fry

Fry the sole according to your preferred method for fried sole.
Carefully remove the bone without breaking the fish.

Fill and serve

Place some maitre-d'hôtel butter in the cavity of the fish.
Serve immediately before the butter melts.
Garnish with fried parsley and cut lemon.

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.

Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together28,563 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,227 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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, cooked by frying to a crisp exterior and tender flesh.
Maitre-d'hôtel butter: Melts into the warm fish, adding richness and moisture to the flesh.
Lemon: Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and the fried fish.

The step that matters

Serve immediately before the butter melts. Maitre-d'hôtel butter is a parsley and lemon butter that softens and melts quickly on hot fish. Serving promptly keeps it solid for a clean look and a controlled, fresh flavour when it reaches the table.

“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.