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Plaice Fillets with Wine Sauce

Plaice fillets simmered with wine, mushrooms, and a butter‑flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and shallot are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,982 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Plaice Fillets with Wine Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the fish

  1. Remove the black skin from the fish and cut it into 2 or 3 evenly sized fillets.

  2. In a buttered sauté pan, place the fillets and season with pepper and salt.

  3. Moisten the fillets with the wine and about 1 tablespoon of mushroom liquor.

  4. Add the mace and halved shallots to the fillets.

  5. Cover the fillets with buttered paper.

  6. Cook the fillets in a 350°F (175°C) oven for about 15 minutes, depending on thickness.

Make the sauce

  1. Prepare a white roux by melting the remaining butter and mixing in the flour.

  2. Moisten the roux with ½ cup fish stock, a little hot milk, and the liquor from the fillets.

  3. Stir the roux until it boils.

  4. Let the roux simmer for 10 minutes.

  5. Slice the mushrooms and season them.

  6. Strain the sauce.

  7. Add the egg yolk to the sauce and heat it just enough to bind the ingredients.

  8. Stir in the mushrooms.

Serve

  1. Serve the fish with the sauce poured over it, garnished as desired.

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. Mushroom + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Wine + mushroomtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,632 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-propylphenol (allspice, anise).

  5. Butter + fishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

What each ingredient does

Plaice
The main protein, which cooks gently in wine and its own liquor to stay moist.
Butter
Enriches the roux and adds richness and flavour to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter into a roux that gives the sauce body.
Egg yolk
Enriches and binds the sauce when heated gently, giving it a smooth, thicker texture.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and texture to the finished sauce.
Chablis or sauterne wine
Moistens the fillets and adds acidity and aroma to the cooking liquor.

The step that matters

Heat the sauce just enough to bind the egg yolk. Egg yolk thickens through gentle heat, but if the sauce gets too hot it can curdle or scramble, leaving it grainy instead of smooth.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (wine, mushroom, butter, shallot, flour, fish, egg):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against wine, mushroom, butter, shallot, flour, fish, egg. 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.

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