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Plaice, or Soles, Rolled

Rolled plaice or soles fillets served with a sauce of fish stock, milk, water, bay leaf, parsley, cloves, shallot, butter, flour, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 ↓

Plaice, or Soles, Rolled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fillets

  1. Fillet the plaice.

  2. Season the fillets with salt, pepper, and lemon juice.

  3. Roll the fillets.

  4. Place them on a greased baking sheet.

  5. Cover the fillets with greased paper.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the bones, milk, water, bay leaf, parsley stalks, cloves, and shallot.

  2. Simmer the mixture for 20 minutes.

  3. Melt the butter in a pan.

  4. Add the flour to the melted butter.

  5. Cook the mixture for a few minutes.

  6. Stir in the fish stock.

  7. Bring the sauce to a boil.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake the rolled fillets for about 10 minutes, or until cooked through.

  2. Season the fillets to taste.

  3. Serve the fillets on a hot dish.

  4. Strain the sauce over the fillets.

  5. Sprinkle with chopped parsley.

  6. Serve hot.

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. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Plaice
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking through to a delicate, flaky texture.
Flour
Cooked with butter to form a roux that thickens the fish sauce.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and, with flour, forms the base that thickens it.
Fish stock
Forms the liquid of the sauce, adding savoury fish flavour.
Milk
Adds body and mild sweetness to the sauce, softening its flavour.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Bring the sauce to a boil after adding the stock. Flour must be cooked with the fat and liquid long enough to thicken smoothly; adding stock to a roux and boiling it lets starch swell and set the sauce. Lumps form if the liquid is added too quickly or the mixture is not stirred.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, pepper, shallot, parsley, butter, flour, fish. 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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