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Plain Boiled Sole

A simple boiled sole served with parsley, lemon slices, and melted butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Plain Boiled Sole

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the sole as directed.

  2. Place the sole in a pot with plenty of cold water and add the salt.

  3. Bring the water gently to a boil.

Cook and serve

  1. Reduce heat and let it simmer for 5 to 10 minutes, depending on the size of the sole.

  2. Once cooked, place the sole in a clean napkin.

  3. Garnish with parsley and lemon slices.

  4. Serve with plain melted butter or your preferred 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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sole
Is the main protein, which turns opaque and flaky as it cooks gently in the water.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the cooking water so the mild fish is lightly flavoured from the start.

The step that matters

Keeping the water at a gentle simmer. Once the water reaches a boil, reducing the heat to a simmer matters because vigorous boiling can toughen delicate fish and break it apart. Gentle heat cooks the flesh evenly and keeps it tender and intact.

“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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