Name: Soles Stewed in Cream
Ingredients: middling sized soles; ½ teaspoon coarse sea salt; sweet rich cream; ¼ teaspoon pounded mace

Why it works: Cream and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,009 recipes. The science ↓

Soles Stewed in Cream

Ingredients

middling sized soles
½ teaspoon coarse sea salt
sweet rich cream
¼ teaspoon pounded mace

Directions

Prepare

Prepare fresh soles carefully.
Bring a pot of salted water to a boil.

Cook and finish

Simmer the soles in boiling water for 2 minutes.
Remove the soles and let them drain.
Place the soles in a wide stewpan and cover with cream.
Season with pounded mace.

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.

Cream + macetop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,009 recipes

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 stew, giving a delicate, flaky texture when gently simmered.
Sweet rich cream: Adds moisture, richness and mild sweetness to the stew liquid.

“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.