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Filleted Soles

Baked sole fillets served with a butter‑flour sauce and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Filleted Soles

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

  1. Butter a plate and lay the fillets on it, sprinkling a few drops of lemon juice.

  2. Butter a piece of thin white paper and lay it over the fish.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 10 to 15 minutes, depending on size.

  2. Remove from the oven and place in the center of a dish.

  3. Pour over the 'Maitre d’Hotel' sauce made by stirring 2 tablespoons of butter and 1 tablespoon of flour over gentle heat.

  4. Add 1 tablespoon of cream or milk, a little fish liquid made from the bones and skin of the sole, and finely chopped 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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

Soles
Forms the delicate flaky main body of the dish, cooked gently under buttered paper.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, keeping the fish from drying while it bakes.
Flour
Thickens the melted butter into a smooth sauce that coats the fish.
Cream or milk
Loosens the sauce and adds creamy richness and mild sweetness.

The step that matters

Baking the fillets. Fish cooks quickly and turns dry and firm if overbaked. Checking at the shorter end of the 10 to 15 minute range helps keep the flesh moist, especially for thinner fillets.

“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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