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Fried Soles, Tartar Sauce

A fish dish of fried soles served with a sauce made from wine, herbs, onion, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Fried Soles, Tartar Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Let the soles lie for 2 hours, then dry them with a cloth.

Poach the soles

  1. In a stew-pan, combine white wine, water, thyme, marjoram, savory, and the onion.

  2. Add the soles and sprinkle with coarse sea salt.

  3. Cover and simmer gently until cooked.

  4. Remove the soles and place them in a warm dish.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Strain the cooking liquid.

  2. Add butter rolled in flour.

  3. Boil until thickened.

  4. Pour the sauce over the soles 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. Thyme + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Thyme + winter savorytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together780 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Marjoram + winter savorytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together455 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Winter savory + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together690 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Marjoram + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Soles
Form the main body of the dish, cooking gently to a delicate, flaky texture.
Butter rolled in flour
Thickens the strained cooking liquid into a smooth, lightly rich sauce.
White wine
Provides acidity and flavour to the poaching liquid, which becomes the sauce base.

The step that matters

Simmer gently until cooked. A gentle simmer cooks the thin fillets through without boiling them, which would toughen and break up the delicate flesh.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (white wine, thyme, marjoram, winter savory, clove, butter, flour):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against white wine, thyme, marjoram, winter savory, clove, butter, flour. 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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