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Sole Au Gratin

A baked sole fillet topped with a butter, shallot, mushroom, parsley, wine, lemon, and breadcrumb mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 14,037 recipes mention both. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Sole Au Gratin

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the fish in cold water and dry it carefully with a cloth.

  2. In a stewpan, melt the butter with the shallot, mushrooms, and parsley; let it boil.

  3. Prepare a fireproof dish for serving the fish.

Assemble and bake

  1. Place 1 tablespoon of the butter mixture in the dish, lay the sole on top, and pour the remaining mixture over the fish.

  2. Add the white wine and lemon juice, then cover the sole with browned bread crumbs.

  3. Dot the bread crumbs with several pieces of butter and bake for 15 minutes.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,737 recipes

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

  3. Shallot + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together1,982 recipes

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

  4. Mushroom + white winetop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together1,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  5. Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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 and cooks gently in the butter and wine.
Butter
Carries flavor and moisture, and browns the bread crumbs on top.
White wine
Adds acidity and moisture that helps flavor the fish and sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the buttery sauce and balances its richness.
Bread crumbs
Form a golden crust on top that gives the dish its gratin finish.

The step that matters

Dot the bread crumbs with several pieces of butter and bake for 15 minutes.. Butter on the crumbs helps them brown evenly in the oven. Without it, the topping can stay pale or dry out before the fish is cooked through.

“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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