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Plain Boiled Sole

A simple boiled sole served with parsley, lemon slices, and plain melted butter or other sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon 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 ↓

Plain Boiled Sole

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and poach

  1. Clean the sole as directed.

  2. Place the sole in a pot of cold water with salt.

  3. Bring the water gently to a boil.

  4. Reduce heat and simmer for 5 to 10 minutes, depending on the size of the sole.

Serve

  1. Once cooked, transfer the sole to a clean napkin.

  2. Garnish with parsley and lemon slices.

  3. Serve with plain melted butter or your choice of sauce.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Sole
Is the main protein, which turns firm and flaky as it cooks gently in the water.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the fish and the poaching water.

The step that matters

Simmering the sole gently. Once the water boils, reducing the heat to a simmer keeps the flesh tender and moist. A hard boil can toughen and break up the delicate fish, so the time should be adjusted to the size of the sole.

“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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