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Fillets of Sole, with White Sauce

A fish fillet cooked in a butter, flour, and milk white sauce seasoned with salt, pepper, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Fillets of Sole, with White Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt 2 tablespoons of butter in a pan.

  2. Add 2 tablespoons of flour and stir to form a roux.

  3. Gradually whisk in 1 cup of milk until smooth.

  4. Season with salt, pepper, and a splash of lemon juice.

Cook the fish

  1. Cook the fillets of sole in the sauce until they are opaque and cooked through.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Butter
Enriches the sauce and gives it a rich, savoury flavour.
Flour
Thickens the sauce with butter to form a roux that gives body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which thickens as it is whisked.
Fillets of sole
Provide the main protein, which turns opaque and flakes as it cooks.

The step that matters

Whisking in the milk. Adding the liquid too quickly or without whisking lets the starch clump before it hydrates, leaving lumps. Adding milk gradually while whisking keeps the roux smooth as it thickens.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Mangofits about as well
  4. Coconutfits less well

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