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Plaice, or Soles, Rolled

Rolled plaice or soles fillets seasoned, baked with a sauce made from bones, milk, water, bay leaf, parsley, cloves, shallot, butter, flour, and fish stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Plaice, or Soles, Rolled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fillets

  1. Fillet the plaice and season the fillets with salt, pepper, and lemon juice.

  2. Roll the fillets and place them on a greased baking sheet, covering with parchment paper.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the bones with milk, water, bay leaf, parsley stalks, cloves, and shallot.

  2. Simmer the mixture for 20 minutes.

  3. Melt the butter in a pan, add the flour, and cook for a few minutes.

  4. Stir in the fish stock and bring to a boil.

  5. Strain the sauce over the fillets.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake the rolled fillets for about 15 minutes, or until cooked through.

  2. Season the fillets to taste.

  3. Serve the fillets on a hot dish.

  4. Sprinkle with chopped parsley and serve immediately.

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. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Plaice or soles
Provides the delicate white flesh that is rolled, baked and served as the main dish.
Butter
Forms a roux with the flour, enriching the sauce and giving it a smooth, rich body.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter, giving it body and a smooth texture.
Fish stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding savoury fish flavour.
Shallot
Adds a mild aromatic sweetness to the fish-bone liquid used for the sauce.

The step that matters

Bring the sauce to a boil after adding the stock. Whisking the stock into the butter and flour roux and then boiling it lets the starch swell fully, so the sauce thickens smoothly instead of staying thin or lumpy.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, pepper, shallot, parsley, butter, flour, fish. 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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