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Sole a LA Rouennaise

Sole fillets folded over a lobster and white sauce mixture, baked and garnished with truffles, parsley, lobster coral, egg yolk, served with Hollandaise.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 14,037 recipes mention both. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Sole a LA Rouennaise

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 filling

  1. Fillet the sole.

  2. Break the lobster into small pieces and pound it.

  3. Combine the lobster, thick white sauce, cream, pepper, and salt in a saucepan and heat thoroughly.

Assemble and bake

  1. Lay some of the mixture on one half of each fillet, fold over the other half, and place on a buttered baking tray.

  2. Squeeze lemon juice over the fillets, cover with buttered paper, and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 10 minutes.

Garnish and serve

  1. Arrange on a serving dish, garnishing with truffles, parsley, lobster coral, and yolk of hard boiled egg.

  2. Serve with Hollandaise 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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Lobster + saucetop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together1,095 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Lobster + creamtop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together1,050 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sole
Forms the delicate wrapped fillets that hold the filling while baking.
Lobster
Provides the rich, sweet seafood flavour of the filling.
Thick white sauce
Binds the lobster into a creamy filling that stays moist in the oven.
Cream
Adds richness and smoothness to the filling.

The step that matters

Baking the wrapped fillets. Fish cooks quickly and dries out easily. Covering with buttered paper traps steam so the fillets stay moist while the filling heats through, and the 10-minute bake should not be extended without checking that the fish flakes.

“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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