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Fried Sole

A sole fillet coated in beaten egg and bread crumbs, fried until brown and garnished with fried parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Fried Sole

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Cover the sole with the beaten egg.

  2. Coat the sole with fine bread crumbs, pressing them on with a knife.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat oil in a deep frying pan over moderate heat.

  2. Fry the sole for 3 to 6 minutes until brown.

  3. Drain the sole on soft kitchen paper.

  4. Serve on a napkin or paper and garnish with 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. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sole
The main fish, which cooks through in the hot oil while the coating crisps.
Beaten egg
Binds the fine bread crumbs to the fish so the coating stays on during frying.
Fine bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that browns in the hot oil.

The step that matters

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

Swap the parsley

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against 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.

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