Skip to main content
Main

Filleted Sole

Filleted sole is a fish fillet coated in flour, egg, and breadcrumbs, then fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,675 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Filleted Sole

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Remove the fillet by passing a sharp knife down the center of the fish, keeping it close to the bone.

  2. Rub each fillet with fine flour.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip the fillets in the beaten egg, then coat with fresh bread crumbs.

  2. Fry in clear boiling fat until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Arrange neatly on a napkin or dish paper and garnish with carefully fried parsley.

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. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Bread + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,588 recipes

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

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + parsleytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,765 recipes

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

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Fine flour
Dry coating that helps the egg wash adhere evenly to the fish.
Eggs
Binding layer that makes the bread crumbs stick to the fillets.
Fresh bread crumbs
Crisp outer crust that browns in the hot fat.

The step that matters

Frying in hot fat. The fat must be hot enough to brown the crumb coating quickly. If it is too cool, the coating absorbs fat and turns greasy before the delicate fish is cooked through.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, egg, bread):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Turmericfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, egg, bread. 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes