Name: Sole Au Vin Blanc, or Fillet of Sole with Wine Sauce
Ingredients: fillets of sole; butter; coarse sea salt; black pepper; white wine; water; lemon; onion; thyme

Why it works: Lemon and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 3,973 recipes mention both. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Sole Au Vin Blanc, or Fillet of Sole with Wine Sauce

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.

Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
Butter a baking dish and place the sole fillets in it, adding a few pieces of butter on top.
Sprinkle with coarse sea salt and black pepper.
Add a little white wine and water, or water with a squeeze of lemon.
Cover with greased parchment paper and place in the oven on the top shelf.
Cook quickly until done.
Transfer the fillets to a serving dish and cover with fumette.
Return to the oven for 2-3 minutes and serve.

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.

Lemon + thymetop 1% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together3,973 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together11,585 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together11,171 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together5,083 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper, white wine, lemon, thyme):

Shallotbetter flavor fit
Leekbetter flavor fit
Capsicumbetter flavor fit
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, white wine, lemon, thyme. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).