Skip to main content
Main

Sole Au Gratin

A baked sole fillet topped with parsley, shallot, mushrooms, butter, breadcrumbs, and glaze.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Butter a gratin dish.

  3. Sprinkle half of the parsley, shallot, and mushrooms on the dish, along with a little lemon juice, pepper, and salt.

  4. Lay the sole in the dish, skin side down, notched to prevent contracting while cooking.

  5. Remove the dark skin from the sole.

Bake and serve

  1. Sprinkle the remaining parsley, shallot, and mushrooms over the sole.

  2. Add a few pieces of butter on top.

  3. Bake for 10 to 15 minutes.

  4. Serve in the dish it was cooked in, with the glaze poured over it.

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. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,737 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together27,047 recipes

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

  5. Mushroom + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together1,982 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
Forms the main body of the dish and cooks gently in the dish's juices.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the fish stay moist and the top brown.
Button mushrooms
Release moisture and savoury flavour as they cook under the fish.
Shallot
Adds a mild onion-like sweetness and aroma that softens during baking.
Good glaze
Adds a rich, glossy finish and concentrated flavour when poured over the fish.

The step that matters

Notching the sole before baking. Notching the skin stops the fish from contracting and curling as it heats, so it bakes flat and evenly in the dish.

“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

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesMushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes