Skip to main content
Main

Dressed Fish

A dish of sole fillets topped with a sauce of butter, flour, fish stock, cream, and seasonings, garnished with truffles, egg, coral, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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 ↓

Dressed Fish

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the fish

  1. Fillet the soles and fold them over.

  2. Place the fillets on a buttered baking tray.

  3. Cover the tray with buttered paper to prevent burning.

  4. Cook in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the flour and fish stock to the melted butter.

  3. Stir in the cream, salt, cayenne, and lemon juice.

Prepare the garnish

  1. Finely chop the truffles, egg yolks, and parsley.

  2. Pound the coral in a mortar.

  3. Strain the coral through a fine sieve.

Assemble and serve

  1. Arrange the soles on a serving dish.

  2. Pour the sauce over the soles.

  3. Garnish each fillet alternately with truffles, egg, coral, and parsley.

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

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

  2. Lobster + creamtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Butter + fishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Butter
Provides fat and rich flavour, and forms the base of the sauce with the flour.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the hot liquid.
Fish stock
Supplies the liquid and savoury seafood flavour of the sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the sauce.
Lobster coral
Adds seafood flavour and a bright colour to the garnish and sauce.

The step that matters

Add the flour and fish stock to the melted butter.. Cooking the flour briefly in the melted butter removes its raw taste and helps it thicken evenly. Adding the stock gradually while stirring lets the starch swell smoothly, which prevents lumps in the sauce.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, lobster, butter, flour, fish, cream, pepper):

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, lobster, butter, flour, fish, cream, pepper. 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesLobster SauceLobster Sauce174 recipesFried FishFried Fish120 recipesLobster CroquettesLobster Croquettes99 recipes