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Baked Soles with Mushrooms

Baked sole fish served with a mushroom sauce made from oysters, onions, herbs, and brown sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Baked Soles with Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the fish

  1. Clean and pare off the dark skin of the soles, then split them in the middle and lay them in a buttered baking dish.

  2. Blanch the oysters, then strain the oysters' liquor.

  3. Pour the liquor and white wine over the soles.

  4. Season the soles with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  5. Bake in the oven at 350°F (175°C).

Make the sauce

  1. Drain the liquor into a saucepan.

  2. Add the chopped onion and sweet herbs to the saucepan.

  3. Cover and boil until reduced by half.

  4. Strain the mixture.

  5. Add the halved mushrooms and brown sauce.

  6. Boil again until thick and creamy.

  7. Remove from heat.

  8. Stir in the butter, parsley, and lemon juice until the butter has dissolved.

Serve

  1. Place the soles on a hot dish.

  2. Garnish with oysters and mushrooms.

  3. Pour the sauce over the fish.

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

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

  2. White wine + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  3. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. White wine + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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 the wine and oyster liquor.
Oysters
Add a briny, savoury flavour to the liquor and serve as a garnish.
Butter
Enriches the sauce, giving it a smooth, glossy texture as it melts in.
Brown sauce
Gives the sauce body and a deep savoury flavour.
Button mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and soft texture to the sauce and garnish.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and balances the butter.

The step that matters

Stirring in the butter off the heat. Adding butter off the heat lets it melt and emulsify into the sauce gently. If the sauce is too hot, the butter can separate and leave the sauce greasy instead of smooth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, white wine, pepper, mushroom, sauce, butter, parsley):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, white wine, pepper, mushroom, sauce, butter, parsley. 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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