Skip to main content
Main

Soles Aux Fines Herbes

Sole fillets cooked with butter, parsley, shallots, breadcrumbs, and white wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Soles Aux Fines Herbes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the fish

  1. Clean the soles by removing the black skin, scraping the white skin, and wiping them well.

Assemble and cook

  1. Melt ½ cup of butter in a fireproof dish over low heat.

  2. Add the chopped parsley, shallots, salt, and pepper to the melted butter.

  3. Place the soles on top of the mixture.

  4. Cover the soles with the parsley mixture, breadcrumbs, and a little melted butter.

  5. Pour the white wine over the soles.

  6. Add small pieces of butter on top.

  7. Cook the dish on low heat.

Brown and serve

  1. Fifteen minutes before serving, place the dish in a 300°F (150°C) oven to brown.

  2. Serve the fish in the dish it was cooked in.

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. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Shallot + white winetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together881 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 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
Provide the delicate white fish that is the main component of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the breadcrumbs brown in the oven.
Breadcrumbs
Form a crust on top that browns and adds a light texture.
White wine
Adds acidity and moisture, keeping the fish tender as it cooks.
Shallots
Contribute a mild, aromatic sweetness to the butter base.

The step that matters

Cooking on low heat. Gentle heat keeps delicate sole moist and tender, while high heat would toughen the proteins and dry the fish before the topping browns.

Flavor stand-ins for the shallot

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

  1. Shallotthe original
  2. Carrotabout as good a flavor fit

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, parsley, pepper, white wine. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes