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Filleted Soles a LA Reine

A filleted sole cooked in a creamy butter, milk, and flour sauce with horseradish, parsley, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Filleted Soles a LA Reine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Fillet the sole.

  2. If the fillets are large, cut them in half.

  3. Roll the fillets up and tie them with kitchen twine if necessary.

  4. Place the fillets in boiling salted water to cover and boil for 10 minutes.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt 2 ounces of butter.

  2. Add 2 tablespoons of flour and gradually mix in hot milk until it reaches a creamy consistency.

  3. Season the sauce with salt, pepper, and a little grated horseradish or lemon juice.

Combine and finish

  1. Carefully place the fillets into the sauce, ensuring they are just covered.

  2. Simmer for 2 minutes, adding chopped parsley if desired.

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 + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + horseradishtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together562 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Horseradish + flourtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together743 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Horseradish + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,646 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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, cooked gently by poaching and then in the sauce.
Butter
Fat that combines with flour to form a roux, giving the sauce richness and body.
Flour
Thickens the melted butter into a roux, which gives the milk sauce its creamy texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which thickens as it heats with the roux.
Grated horseradish
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that cuts through the richness of the butter and milk.

The step that matters

Adding the hot milk to the roux. Adding the milk gradually while stirring keeps the flour evenly dispersed, which prevents lumps and gives a smooth, creamy sauce.

Swap the horseradish

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, parsley, butter, pepper, flour):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Horseradishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, parsley, butter, pepper, flour. 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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