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Soles Stewed in Cream

A stew of fresh soles simmered in cream with mace, cayenne, salt, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 fish

  1. Remove the gills from the soles and place them in boiling salted water for 2 minutes.

  2. Lift them out and let them drain.

Cook the stew

  1. In a wide stewpan, combine the soles with the cream, mace, cayenne, and salt.

  2. Simmer the fish gently for 6 to 10 minutes, until the flesh separates from the bones.

Finish and serve

  1. Dish the soles and stir the lemon juice into the sauce.

  2. 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 fish flesh, which firms and flakes when gently simmered.
Rich cream
Forms the body of the sauce and adds richness and moisture to the fish.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the cream sauce and balances its richness.

The step that matters

Simmer the fish gently. Vigorous boiling toughens fish proteins and can break the delicate flesh apart, while gentle heat lets it turn opaque and 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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