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Filleted Soles

Filleted soles are fish fillets coated in egg and breadcrumbs, fried in boiling lard, served with parsley and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Filleted Soles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Remove the head, fins, and tail from the soles and separate them from the backbone.

  2. Sprinkle a small quantity of coarse sea salt inside the fish.

  3. Cut the fish into pieces.

Bread and fry

  1. Dip the pieces into beaten egg, then into bread crumbs, then dip them again into beaten egg and into bread crumbs.

  2. Fry the fillets in boiling lard until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Arrange the fried fillets around a center of parsley.

  2. Garnish with slices of lemon.

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. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Bread + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,588 recipes

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

  4. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Bread + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,445 recipes

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

Egg and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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
The main fish, whose delicate flesh becomes tender and flaky when fried.
Egg
Beaten egg coats the fish so the bread crumbs stick and form a crust.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that browns when fried.
Boiling lard
Fries the coating quickly, browning it and sealing in moisture.

The step that matters

Frying the fillets in boiling lard. The lard must be hot enough to crisp and brown the coating quickly. If it is too cool, the breading absorbs fat and turns greasy while the fish overcooks.

“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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