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Filleted Sole, with Brown Piquante Sauce

Sole fillets simmered in a brown piquant sauce of butter, flour, fish stock, vinegar, capers, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,024 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Filleted Sole, with Brown Piquante Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt butter in a pan over medium heat.

  2. Add flour and stir to make a roux.

  3. Gradually whisk in fish stock until smooth.

  4. Add vinegar, capers, salt, and pepper; simmer for 5 minutes.

Cook the fish

  1. Cook the sole fillets in the sauce for 3-4 minutes on each side until cooked through.

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. Flour + caperstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,024 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Capers + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,088 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Fish + caperstop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together165 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

Sole fillets
The main protein, cooked gently in the sauce until it turns opaque and flakes.
Butter
Enriches the base and carries flavour when it forms the roux with flour.
Flour
Thickens the sauce by forming a roux with the melted butter.
Fish stock
Forms the liquid body of the sauce, adding savoury depth.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the sauce and balances its richness.
Capers
Add briny, sharp notes that give the sauce its piquant character.

The step that matters

Whisking in the fish stock. Adding liquid too quickly or without steady whisking to a roux can leave lumps, because starch granules clump before they can hydrate evenly. Adding stock gradually while whisking keeps the sauce smooth and lets it thicken evenly.

Swap the capers

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

  1. Tarragonfits about as well
  2. Parsleyfits about as well
  3. Capersthe original
  4. Turmericfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, fish, vinegar, 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.

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