Skip to main content
Main

Fried Sole

Fried sole is a fish fillet coated in flour and eggs, pan‑fried until golden and served with parsley and lemon.

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 cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Fried Sole

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Remove the black skin from the sole and scrape or skin the other side.

  2. Remove the gills and fins, then wash and wipe the fish.

  3. Make an incision down each side, not quite to the backbone.

  4. Place the sole in a dish and cover it with milk for 10-15 minutes.

  5. Dust the fish with flour on both sides or brush with egg and bread crumbs.

  6. Dry the fish with a clean cloth.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat fat in a frying pan or frying kettle to 380°F (193°C), gradually raising it to 385°F (196°C).

  2. Fry the sole until golden brown, then place it on kitchen paper or a clean cloth.

  3. Sprinkle with salt and serve on a napkin, garnished with fried parsley and half a lemon.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Sole
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked through by frying to a firm, flaky texture.
Milk
Soaks into the fish to add moisture and mild flavour before coating.
Flour
Dries the surface and forms a light crust that browns during frying.
Eggs
Help the coating adhere and set into a crisp, golden layer when fried.
Oil
Conducts heat to the fish, browning the coating and adding richness.

The step that matters

Frying at the correct temperature. Frying at 380°F to 385°F sets the coating quickly so it turns golden and crisp, while the fish cooks through. Fat that is too cool lets the coating absorb oil and turn greasy.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Turmericfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, flour, egg, lemon. 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.

More fried sole recipes

Fillets 20 See all 66 →

You might also like

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