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Soles, a LA Parisienne

Sole fillets baked with a quenelle forcemeat, Allemande sauce, and served with crayfish and croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Whiting and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 236 recipes mention both. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: egg, milk, wheat, shellfish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the soles

  1. Trim the soles and slit them down the back to remove the bone.

  2. Line the soles with quenelle forcemeat mixed with chopped herbs.

  3. Place them in a buttered sauté pan, season with salt and pepper, and moisten with white wine.

  4. Cover with buttered paper and bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

  5. Once done, press between two dishes and cool in the larder.

Coat and fry

  1. Prepare a stiffly-reduced Allemande sauce.

  2. Trim the soles and cover them with the sauce.

  3. Once the sauce has set, coat with egg and bread crumbs.

  4. Fry until golden brown, then serve garnished with a Parisian ragout and a border of crayfish and croutons.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Whiting + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together236 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Butter + breadtop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together27,145 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. White wine + buttertop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together5,039 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Butter + crayfishtop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together343 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  5. Egg + breadtop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together22,584 recipes

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

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, cooked gently in wine and a covering of buttered paper.
Quenelle forcemeat of whitings
Lines the fish and forms a delicate, tender layer while the soles bake.
Allemande sauce
Stiffly reduced so it sets, providing a coating that holds the crumbs in place.
Egg
Binds the bread crumbs to the sauced fish so they fry into a crisp golden coating.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden, browned outer crust when fried.

The step that matters

Let the sauce set before coating. The Allemande must be stiffly reduced and fully set before the egg and crumbs go on. If it is still soft, the coating slides off and the crumbs soak up oil during frying.

“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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