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Plain Boiled Sole

A simple boiled sole seasoned with salt, lemon, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Plain Boiled Sole

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the sole as directed.

  2. Place the sole in a large pot of cold water with salt.

  3. Bring the water gently to a boil.

Cook and serve

  1. Reduce heat and simmer for 5 to 10 minutes, depending on the size of the sole.

  2. Once cooked, transfer the sole to a clean napkin.

  3. Garnish with parsley and lemon slices.

  4. Serve with melted butter or your choice of sauce.

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).

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

What each ingredient does

Sole
Is the main protein; gentle simmering firms its flesh while keeping it moist.
Lemon
Adds bright acidity that balances the mild, delicate flavour of the fish.

The step that matters

Simmer gently after bringing the water to a boil. Once the water boils, reducing the heat to a gentle simmer keeps the fish from toughening. A hard boil forces proteins to contract and squeeze out moisture, leaving the flesh dry and firm.

“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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