Skip to main content
Main

Filleted Sole or Plaice

Baked fish fillets seasoned with pepper, sea salt, lemon juice, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Filleted Sole or Plaice

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. Fold the fillets with skin inside and place them on a greased dish.

  2. Sprinkle with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  3. Squeeze lemon juice over the fillets and add pieces of butter on top.

Bake

  1. Cover with greased paper and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 6 to 8 minutes.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sole or plaice fillets
Provide the delicate white flesh that cooks gently and flakes when done.
Butter
Adds fat and moisture, keeping the fish tender and rich as it bakes.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the mild fish.

The step that matters

Cover with greased paper and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 6 to 8 minutes. Fish cooks quickly and turns dry and tough once overcooked. Checking at the short end of the time helps the flesh stay moist and flake easily.

“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.

More baked sole recipes

Fillets 6with Breadcrumbs 3 See all 41 →

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes