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Baked Sole

A baked sole fillet seasoned with butter, flour, herbs, and wine, finished with capers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Baked Sole

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Butter a baking pan and lay the sole pieces in it.

  3. Dry the sole, sprinkle with flour, and season well.

Bake and finish

  1. Add sliced onion, bay leaves, allspice, parsley, thyme, and white wine.

  2. Bake until the fish is cooked through.

  3. Thicken the sauce with flour and butter, then stir in capers 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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Allspice + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,077 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Allspice + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,289 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sole
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking into flaky, tender pieces.
Butter
Adds richness and helps keep the fish moist while it bakes.
Flour
Coats the fish and thickens the sauce so it becomes smooth and cohesive.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma, lifting the flavour of the sauce.
Capers
Contribute a sharp, briny bite that balances the richness of the butter.

The step that matters

Thicken the sauce with flour and butter. Flour must be cooked into the butter and liquid, or it stays grainy and tastes raw. Stirring it smoothly while the liquid is hot lets the starch swell evenly and thicken the sauce without lumps.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, butter, flour, allspice, corn, parsley, thyme):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, butter, flour, allspice, corn, parsley, thyme. 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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