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Baked Sole

Baked sole with lemon butter sauce and fine herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley 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 ↓

Baked Sole

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the sole

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Remove the black skin from the sole, scrape or skin the other side, remove the gills, cut off the fins, clean it, and wipe it with a clean cloth.

  3. Make an incision on each side down the back to the bone.

Bake the sole

  1. Spread 1 ounce of butter in an oval gratin pan, lay the sole on top, and season with salt, pepper, lemon juice, and ½ cup of stock or water.

  2. Bake in the oven for 15 to 20 minutes.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a small saucepan, melt 1 ounce of butter, add 1 ounce of flour, and stir for 2 to 3 minutes.

  2. Gradually add ½ pint of water or stock, seasoning with salt and pepper.

  3. After 20 minutes, pour the cooking liquid from the sole into the sauce, add 1½ ounces of butter and the finely minced herbs.

  4. Boil the sauce briefly, then place the sole on a dish, pour the sauce over it, and serve.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + peppertop 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. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

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 gently in its own juices and steam.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour, and enriches the sauce for a glossy finish.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked briefly in butter to form a roux.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the mild flavour of the fish.

The step that matters

Stirring the roux before adding liquid. Cooking the butter and flour together for 2 to 3 minutes cooks out the raw starch taste and helps the flour thicken smoothly when the liquid is added gradually.

“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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