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Boiled Sole Aux Capres

A boiled sole served with sauce hollandaise, small boiled potatoes, and capers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,222 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Boiled Sole Aux Capres

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Slowly boil the soles in water with salt and lemon juice.

  2. Once cooked, drain the water and place the soles on an oval dish.

  3. Pour sauce hollandaise over the soles.

  4. Serve surrounded by small boiled potatoes and capers arranged in little heaps.

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. Lemon + caperstop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,222 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Potato + caperstop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together224 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Sauce + caperstop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together678 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Lemon + potatotop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

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

  5. Sauce + potatotop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,073 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Soles
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking gently in simmering water to stay tender.
Sauce hollandaise
Adds richness and fat, giving a smooth, creamy coating over the fish.
Capers
Add a sharp, salty acidity that cuts through the richness of the hollandaise.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and brightness to the poaching liquid, lightly flavouring the fish.

The step that matters

Slowly boil the soles. Fish proteins toughen and dry out when the liquid boils hard. Keeping the water at a gentle simmer cooks the soles evenly and keeps the flesh moist and flaky.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, sauce, capers):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Kalefits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, sauce, capers. 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.

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