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The Dinner Question

Fried soles coated in egg and breadcrumbs, cooked in oil or fat until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and fish work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 226 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

The Dinner Question

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Beat the egg in a bowl using a fork.

  2. Coat the soles in the beaten egg, then in breadcrumbs, ensuring they are fully covered.

Fry

  1. Heat the oil or fat in a pan until it reaches the proper temperature.

  2. Carefully place the soles in the pan, ensuring they are submerged in at least ½ inch of fat.

  3. Fry the first side for about 5 minutes, then check for light brown color.

  4. Turn the soles using a slice and fry the second side for 3.5 to 4 minutes.

  5. Drain the fried soles on a strainer or blotting paper before serving on a hot dish.

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. Beef + fishtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together226 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Egg + fishtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,782 recipes

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

  3. Egg + beeftop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg
Binds the breadcrumbs to the fish so the coating stays in place during frying.
Breadcrumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that browns in the hot fat.
Oil, lard, or beef dripping
Conducts heat to cook the fish and browns the coating through frying.

The step that matters

Heating the fat to the proper temperature before frying. If the fat is not hot enough, the coating absorbs oil and turns greasy instead of crisping. Fat that is too hot browns the coating before the fish cooks through.

“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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