Skip to main content
Main

Fillets 'of Sole with Gherkin Sauce

Sole fillets baked in butter with a white sauce, egg yolk, and chopped gherkins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Fillets 'of Sole with Gherkin Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Roll the fillets of sole and place them in a buttered tin.

  2. Cover the fillets with buttered paper.

Make the sauce and bake

  1. In a bowl, combine the white sauce, egg yolk, and chopped gherkins.

  2. Pour the sauce mixture over the fillets.

  3. Bake until cooked through.

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 + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Sauce + eggtop 39% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,895 recipes

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Fillets of sole
Form the main body of the dish, cooking into tender flakes under the sauce.
White sauce
Provides a creamy base that keeps the fish moist while it bakes.
Egg yolk
Enriches the sauce and helps it set lightly and hold together when baked.
Gherkins
Add a sharp, acidic bite that cuts through the richness of the sauce.

The step that matters

Bake until cooked through. Sole is delicate and cooks quickly, so overbaking dries the flesh. Check that it flakes easily with a fork, and that the egg-enriched sauce has just set.

“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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes