Skip to main content
Main

Soles Au Plat

A baked sole fillet topped with butter, anchovy essence, and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and parsley 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 ↓

Soles Au Plat

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Melt the butter and pour it into a baking dish.

  3. Add salt, cayenne, essence of anchovies, and wine (if using).

Bake

  1. Place the cleaned soles in the dish and cover them with a thick layer of bread crumbs.

  2. Moisten the bread crumbs with clarified butter.

  3. Bake the fish in the oven for 15 minutes.

  4. For added flavor, consider placing a layer of shrimp between the soles and mixing lemon juice with the 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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor, and browns the bread crumbs as it bakes.
Soles
The fish being cooked; its delicate flesh gently cooks in the buttery liquid.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden crust over the fish and help keep it moist underneath.
Dry white wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the buttery sauce that collects around the fish.

The step that matters

Moistening the bread crumbs with clarified butter. Bread crumbs need enough fat to brown evenly and crisp rather than dry out or stay pale. Clarified butter, with its milk solids removed, browns well at oven heat without burning as quickly.

“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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes