Name: Soles Stewed in Cream
Ingredients: 3 to 4 fresh soles; ½ cup boiling water; 1 pint rich cream; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; ¼ teaspoon pounded mace; ¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper; juice of ½ lemon; optional: lemon rind, 1 teaspoon arrowroot mixed with a little milk

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

3 to 4 fresh soles
½ cup boiling water
1 pint rich cream
¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt
¼ teaspoon pounded mace
¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper
juice of ½ lemon
optional: lemon rind, 1 teaspoon arrowroot mixed with a little milk

Directions

Prepare the soles

Remove the gills from the soles and place them in boiling salted water for 2 minutes.
Lift the soles out and let them drain.

Stew

In a wide stewpan, add the soles and cover them with rich cream.
Season with mace, cayenne, and salt, then stew gently for 6 to 10 minutes until the flesh separates from the bones.
Optionally, boil lemon rind in the cream and add arrowroot mixed with milk for thickening if desired.

Finish and serve

Dish the soles and stir the lemon juice into the sauce, pouring it over the fish 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.

Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Lemon + arrowroottop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together553 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Pepper + arrowroottop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together329 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together19,053 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together12,257 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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 fish, which becomes tender and flakes away from the bones during gentle stewing.
Rich cream: Forms the body of the sauce and carries richness and a silky texture to the fish.
Arrowroot: Optional starch that thickens the cream sauce into a smoother, glossier consistency.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the rich cream and balances its heaviness.

The step that matters

Stew gently until the flesh separates. Cream that boils hard can curdle or break, and overcooked fish turns dry and tough. Gentle heat cooks the flesh just until it parts from the bones.

“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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Soles Stewed in Cream