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Soles, a LA Colbert

Soles fillets are floured, fried, opened, filled with cold butter, and served with fish essence or anchovies.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and fish are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,488 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Soles, a LA Colbert

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and fry

  1. Clean and trim the soles, then wash and dry them with a clean cloth.

  2. Dust the soles with flour and fry them until golden.

  3. Cut them open at the back and carefully remove the backbone.

Fill and serve

  1. Fill the inside with cold Maitre d'Hotel butter.

  2. Place the soles on their backs in a dish.

  3. Pour essence of fish or anchovies around them.

  4. Serve hot.

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

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + fishtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Flour and butter 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
Form the main body of the dish, with delicate flesh that cooks quickly and flakes when done.
Flour
Dusted on the fish, it helps form a golden, browned crust during frying.
Maitre d'hotel butter
Adds richness and moisture inside the fish, melting into the flesh as it is served hot.
Essence of fish or anchovies
Adds a concentrated savoury, seafood aroma that flavours the dish around the fish.

The step that matters

Frying until golden. Flour browns through the Maillard reaction at moderate heat. Too little heat leaves the fish pale and greasy, while too much burns the flour before the flesh is cooked through.

“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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