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Soles Stewed in Cream

A fish stew of soles simmered in rich cream with mace, cayenne, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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

Prepare the soles

  1. Remove the gills from the soles.

  2. Place the soles in boiling salted water for 2 minutes.

  3. Lift the soles out and let them drain.

Make the stew

  1. Add the soles to a wide stewpan and cover them with rich cream.

  2. Season the stew with mace, cayenne, and salt, then stew gently for 6 to 10 minutes until the flesh separates from the bones.

  3. Optionally, boil lemon rind in the cream and add arrow-root mixed with milk for thickening before adding lemon juice.

Finish and serve

  1. 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.

  1. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Mace + milktop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,346 recipes

    Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).

  5. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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 firm white flesh that becomes the main body of the stew.
Rich cream
Forms the rich, smooth sauce and adds moisture and fat for a silky texture.
Arrow-root
Thickens the cream sauce so it coats the fish, if used.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich cream and balances its richness.

The step that matters

Gentle stewing of the soles. Simmering gently rather than boiling keeps the delicate fish tender and prevents the cream from separating or curdling. Stewing only until the flesh pulls away from the bones avoids overcooking, which would make the fish dry and stringy.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, mace, pepper, milk):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Mangofits about as well
  4. Strawberryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, mace, pepper, milk. 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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