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Baked Sole

A baked sole fillet seasoned with butter, flour, salt, pepper, onion, bay leaves, allspice, parsley, thyme, white wine, and capers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Baked Sole

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Butter a baking pan and lay the sole pieces in it.

  3. Dry the sole, sprinkle with flour, and season with salt and pepper.

  4. Add sliced onion, bay leaves, allspice, parsley, and thyme to the pan.

Bake and finish

  1. Pour in the white wine and bake until the fish is cooked through.

  2. Thicken the sauce with a mixture of flour and butter, then stir in the capers before serving.

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. Allspice + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,077 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Allspice + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,289 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sole
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking through gently in the oven.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping the fish stay moist and the sauce turn silky.
Flour
Dusts the fish and later thickens the pan sauce into a smooth body.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma, and steams the fish while it bakes.
Capers
Add a sharp, salty acidity that cuts through the richness of the sauce.

The step that matters

Thicken the sauce with flour and butter. Cooking flour in butter, as a roux or beurre manié, lets starch swell and thicken the liquid evenly. Adding it too early or unevenly can leave lumps or a pasty taste.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, butter, flour, pepper, allspice, parsley, thyme. 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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