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Baked Sole

Baked sole fillet seasoned with lemon, stock, and herbs, finished with a butter‑flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Baked Sole

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the sole

  1. Remove the black skin from the sole, then scrape the other side of the sole.

  2. Remove the gills and cut off the fins of the sole, then clean the sole and wipe it with a clean cloth.

  3. Make an incision on each side down the back to the bone.

  4. Butter an oval gratin pan well and lay the sole in the pan.

  5. Season the sole with salt, pepper, and lemon juice, then add the stock or water to the sole.

Bake and make the sauce

  1. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 15 to 20 minutes.

  2. In a small saucepan, melt 1 oz. of butter, then stir in the flour for 2 to 3 minutes.

  3. Add ½ pint of water or stock to the sauce.

  4. Season the sauce with salt and pepper after the sole has baked for 15 to 20 minutes.

  5. Pour the cooking liquid from the sole into the sauce, then add another ounce of butter to the sauce.

  6. Add the minced fine herbs to the sauce and boil the sauce up.

Serve

  1. Place the sole on a dish, pour the sauce over the sole, and serve.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

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 gently in the pan with its own moisture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and helping the sauce feel smooth.
Flour
Thickens the butter and stock into a sauce as it cooks.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the mild flavour of the fish.
Button mushrooms
Contribute savoury, earthy flavour and moisture to the herb sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the melted butter. Cooking the flour briefly in the fat removes its raw taste and lets it thicken the liquid smoothly. Adding liquid too quickly or skipping the stir can leave lumps.

“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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