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Soles, Filleted, Foiled, and Baked

Baked sole fillets wrapped with skin, seasoned, and served with garnish and sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Soles, Filleted, Foiled, and Baked

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 the fish

  1. Fillet the soles and smooth the fillets with a knife.

  2. Roll the fillets up with the white skin inside.

  3. Grease a baking dish with butter and place the rolled fillets inside.

  4. Sprinkle each fillet with salt, white pepper, and a few drops of lemon juice.

  5. Grease a piece of kitchen paper and lay it over the fish to prevent browning.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 5 to 10 minutes.

  2. Drain the fillets on paper and place them on a hot serving dish.

  3. Garnish each roll with a mixture of chopped chili, parsley, egg yolk, pink ham, or truffle.

  4. Serve with maitre d'hotel sauce or brown butter sauce.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Butter + truffletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Ham + truffletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together516 recipes

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

  4. White pepper + parsleytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  5. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Soles
Forms the delicate flaky fillets that are rolled and baked whole.
Butter
Greases the dish and adds richness and moisture to the fish as it cooks.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the mild flavour of the fish.

The step that matters

Covering the fish with greased paper. The greased paper shields the delicate fillets from direct oven heat so they cook gently and avoid browning or drying out before they are done.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, lemon, parsley, egg, ham, truffle, sauce):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, lemon, parsley, egg, ham, truffle, sauce. 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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