Skip to main content
Main

Soles Al Piatto

Sole fish cooked in butter with parsley, onion, dried mushrooms, seasoned with salt and pepper, served with lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Soles Al Piatto

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Preheat a china dish over a tripod with charcoal.

  2. Melt the butter in the dish.

  3. Add parsley, onion, and dried mushrooms; mix with salt and pepper.

Cook and serve

  1. Place the sole in the dish and cover with another dish.

  2. Cook slowly, uncovering once to turn the sole when half cooked.

  3. Serve with a squeeze of lemon juice.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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 into flaky, tender flesh.
Butter
Carries the heat evenly and adds richness and moisture to the fish.
Dried mushrooms
Add concentrated earthy aroma to the butter as it cooks.
Onion
Softens in the butter and adds gentle sweetness and savoury depth.

The step that matters

Turning the sole when half cooked. Turning once at the midpoint lets both sides cook through gently, so the fish stays moist and does not break apart. Cooking slowly under the covering dish traps steam, which keeps the flesh tender rather than dry.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, parsley, mushroom, pepper, lemon):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, parsley, mushroom, pepper, lemon. 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.

More sole in butter recipes

Sauce 4

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesMushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes