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Fried Soles

A simple fried fish dish using soles, butter, salt, pepper, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Fried Soles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean and scale the soles.

  2. Season the soles with salt and pepper.

  3. Dredge the soles in flour.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat butter in a skillet over medium heat.

  2. Fry the soles until golden brown on both sides.

  3. 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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

Butter and flour 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
Provide the main protein, which turns firm and flaky when cooked through.
Flour
Forms a thin coating that browns in the hot fat and helps the crust stay crisp.
Butter
Conducts heat into the fish and adds richness and browning flavor to the crust.

The step that matters

Fry the soles until golden brown on both sides. Fish is delicate and can tear or stick if moved too early. Frying in hot butter over medium heat lets the flour coating set and brown evenly before flipping, and cooking through without overbrowning the butter.

“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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