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Fillets of Soles a LA Cardinal

Sole fillets served with a prawn butter and cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Fillets of Soles a LA Cardinal

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. Skin the soles and fillet them.

  2. Beat the fillets lightly, fold, and trim.

  3. Place the fillets in a buttered sauté pan, season with salt and pepper, and moisten with a little wine and a few drops of lemon juice.

  4. Cover with buttered paper.

  5. Pick the prawns and set them aside for garnish.

Make the sauce

  1. Pound the prawn shells with double the quantity of butter and strain through a sieve.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the bones of the soles with ½ cup water, onion, remaining wine, peppercorns, thyme, parsley, and bay leaf.

  3. Cook slowly for 30 minutes.

  4. Melt 2 oz. of butter in a saucepan, add flour, and cook without browning.

  5. Strain in the fish stock, bring to a boil, then reduce heat and cook for 10 minutes.

  6. Skim and add white stock if too thick.

  7. Pass the sauce through a tammy, return to the saucepan, and add cream and half of the prawn butter.

Cook and serve

  1. Mix the remaining prawn butter with the fish, fill a buttered border mold, and steam for 25 minutes.

  2. Cook the fillets in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for 10 minutes.

  3. Turn out the border onto a hot round dish, arrange the fillets in a circle, and place a prawn between each fillet.

  4. Strain the fish liquid into the sauce while stirring, pour over the border, and serve.

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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  3. Thyme + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Soles
Provide the delicate white fish flesh that forms the main dish and gives the bones for stock.
Butter
Adds richness and carries the prawn flavour through the fish and sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter into a roux.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety body to the finished sauce.
Prawns
Contribute sweet, briny flavour to the prawn butter and serve as garnish.
White wine
Moistens the fish and adds acidity and aroma to the stock and sauce.

The step that matters

Cook the flour in butter without browning. The roux must cook long enough to remove raw starch taste and to swell the starch so the sauce thickens smoothly. Browning changes the flavour and weakens the thickening power, so the colour should stay pale.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, parsley, thyme, cream, pepper, flour, lemon):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, parsley, thyme, cream, pepper, flour, lemon. 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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