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Soles Stewed in Cream

Soles stewed gently in rich cream with mace, cayenne, salt, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Soles Stewed in Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the soles

  1. Remove the gills from the soles and place them in boiling salted water for 2 minutes.

  2. Lift the soles out and let them drain.

Stew in cream

  1. In a wide stewpan, add the soles and cover them with cream.

  2. Season with mace, cayenne, and salt, then stew gently for 6 to 10 minutes until the flesh separates from the bones.

  3. Optionally, boil lemon rind in the cream and add arrowroot for thickening before adding lemon juice.

Finish and serve

  1. Dish the soles and stir the lemon juice into the sauce, then pour it over the fish.

  2. Serve immediately.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Lemon + arrowroottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together553 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Pepper + arrowroottop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together329 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  5. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Soles
Provide the main flesh, which turns tender and flakes away from the bones when gently stewed.
Rich cream
Forms the body of the sauce and gives it a smooth, rich mouthfeel.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich cream and balances its richness.
Arrowroot
Thickens the cream sauce into a smoother, glossier consistency when heated.

The step that matters

Stewing gently in the cream. Cream can curdle or separate if it boils hard, and fish turns tough and dry when overcooked. A gentle simmer keeps the sauce smooth and lets the flesh become tender.

“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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