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Filleted Soles a LA Reine

A French-style sole fillet served in a creamy horseradish sauce with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Filleted Soles a LA Reine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sole

  1. Fillet the sole and cut the fillets into two parts.

  2. Roll them up and tie with cotton if necessary.

  3. Place the fillets in a saucepan with boiling salted water to cover and cook for 10 minutes.

Make the sauce

  1. In another saucepan, melt the butter, add the flour, and stir until smooth.

  2. Gradually add hot milk until the sauce reaches a creamy consistency.

  3. Season the sauce with salt, pepper, and grated horseradish.

Combine and serve

  1. Carefully add the fillets to the sauce, ensuring they are just covered, and simmer for 2 minutes.

  2. Add chopped parsley before serving.

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

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

  2. Parsley + horseradishtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together562 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Horseradish + flourtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together743 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Horseradish + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,646 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sole
Forms the delicate main body of the dish, cooked gently so it stays tender.
Butter
Carries the flour to form the base of the sauce and adds richness.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a smooth, creamy sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid of the sauce, giving it a creamy texture when thickened.

The step that matters

Adding the hot milk to the roux. Adding hot milk gradually to the butter and flour mixture lets the starch swell evenly, which prevents lumps and gives a smooth, creamy sauce.

Swap the horseradish

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Horseradishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, parsley, butter, flour, pepper. 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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