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Soles Stewed in Cream

Soles stewed gently in sweet cream with mace, cayenne, salt, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Soles Stewed in Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the fish

  1. Bring a pot of salted water to a boil.

  2. Add the soles and simmer for 2 minutes.

  3. Remove the soles and let them drain.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Place the soles in a wide stewpan and cover with cream.

  2. Season with mace, cayenne, and salt.

  3. Stew the fish gently for 6 to 10 minutes until the flesh separates from the bones.

  4. Dish the fish and stir lemon juice into the sauce.

  5. Pour the sauce over the soles 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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Cream + macetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,009 recipes
  4. Mace + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,315 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Cream + peppertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together21,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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
Provide the main protein, which turns flaky and tender as it cooks gently in the cream.
Cream
Forms the rich sauce, adding moisture and a smooth, velvety texture as it reduces gently.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich cream and balances its fattiness.

The step that matters

Stew the fish gently. Cream can curdle or break if it boils hard, and fish turns tough and dry when cooked too fast. Gentle heat keeps the sauce smooth and lets the flesh separate cleanly from the bones.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, pepper, 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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