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Steamed Sole

Steamed sole fillets served with a thick white sauce, beetroot, parsley, and egg garnish.

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

Steamed Sole

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Have the soles sent in filleted; there will be eight fillets.

  2. Roll each fillet up and skewer it with a small wooden skewer.

  3. Place them in a soup plate, sprinkle with a little salt, and cover with another plate or lid.

  4. Put them over a large saucepan of fast-boiling water and steam for 45 minutes.

Make the sauce

  1. While they are cooking, make the sauce with milk and a spoonful of liquor from the fish; make it very thick.

  2. Stir in a generous lump of butter, a squeeze of lemon juice, and season to taste.

  3. Chop the yolk of the egg, beetroot, and parsley very fine, separately.

Serve

  1. When the fish is done, remove it from the heat and lay it on a very hot dish, removing the skewers.

  2. Place the rolls close together and pour the thick sauce over them, smoothing it on top.

  3. Decorate with the chopped egg, beetroot, and parsley in a pattern.

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. Beetroot + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together745 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Beetroot + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together574 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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
Forms the main body of the dish, which turns tender and moist as it steams.
Thick white sauce
Adds creamy richness and moisture that coats the rolled fillets.
Hard boiled egg
Contributes a firm, pale garnish and rich yolk flavour on top.
Butter
Adds fat for a smooth, rich finish to the sauce.

The step that matters

Steaming the fish. Fish protein sets and turns opaque quickly, so over-steaming dries and toughens the fillets. Keep the water at a steady boil and check that the fish is just cooked through.

Swap the beetroot

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Beetrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, egg, parsley, butter, 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.

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