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Fillets of Sole, Provence-sauce

Sole fillets served with a sauce made from fish bones, vegetables, aromatics, wine, tomato purée, brown sauce, butter, lemon juice, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Fillets of Sole, Provence-sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Season the sole fillets with salt and flour.

  2. Heat hot oil in a pan and fry the fillets until cooked.

  3. Drain the fillets and arrange them on a serving dish, garnishing with fried parsley.

Make the Provence sauce

  1. In a separate pot, combine fish bones, vegetables, aromatics, and white wine to make an extract.

  2. Skim off the fat and strain the liquid into a saucepan, reducing it to half‑glaze.

  3. Stir in tomato purée and brown sauce, reducing for a few minutes.

  4. Remove from heat and gradually whisk in small pieces of butter until emulsified.

  5. Finish the sauce with lemon juice and cayenne pepper, then serve with the fish.

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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Thyme + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Carrot + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,606 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Whisked in cold pieces off the heat, it emulsifies into the sauce, giving it body and a rich finish.
White wine
Reduced with the bones and vegetables, it adds acidity and depth to the extract that forms the sauce's base.
Tomato purée
Concentrated tomato adds acidity, colour and savoury depth to the reduced sauce.
Brown sauce
Adds savoury depth and colour to the reduced sauce.
Flour
Light dusting on the fillets helps them brown and gives a thin crust when fried.

The step that matters

Whisking in the butter. Butter must be added in small pieces off the heat and whisked steadily. If the sauce is too hot or the butter added too fast, the emulsion can break and the sauce turns greasy and separated.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, parsley, fish, carrot, thyme, white wine, tomato):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, parsley, fish, carrot, thyme, white wine, tomato. 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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