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Filleted Soles Catalane

Filleted soles cooked in a sauce of Catalane sauce, water or wine, parsley, butter, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Filleted Soles Catalane

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook

  1. Trim and fold the fillets of the soles in two.

  2. Place them in a flat stew-pan and lightly salt.

  3. Add water or dry white wine, Catalane sauce, and chopped parsley.

  4. Cover the stew-pan and cook for about 12 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Arrange the fillets on a serving dish.

  2. Add fresh butter and lemon juice to the sauce.

  3. Shake the stew-pan to mix well.

  4. Pour the sauce over the fillets and serve immediately.

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. White wine + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. White wine + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  4. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Soles
Delicate white fish fillets that become tender and flaky when gently poached.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and a silky texture to the sauce as it melts in.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the butter.
Catalane sauce
Provides the main flavour and body of the sauce around the fish.

The step that matters

Cover the stew-pan and cook for about 12 minutes. Gentle covered cooking poaches the fish in its own juices and steam. Overcooking makes delicate fillets dry and firm, so they should be checked for flakiness near the end of the time.

“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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