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Plaice, or Soles, Rolled

Rolled plaice or soles served with a lemon butter sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Plaice, or Soles, Rolled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Fillet the plaice or soles and season the fillets with salt, pepper, and lemon juice.

  2. Roll the fillets and place them on a greased baking sheet, covering with greased paper.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the bones, milk, water, bay leaf, parsley stalks, cloves, and shallot. Simmer for 20 minutes and strain.

  2. Melt the butter in a pan, add the flour, and cook for a few minutes.

  3. Stir in the fish stock and bring to a boil.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake the rolled fillets for 10 minutes or until cooked through.

  2. Serve on a hot dish, strain the sauce over, sprinkle with chopped parsley, 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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 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

Plaice or soles
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking to a delicate, flaky texture when rolled and baked.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the sauce and carries flavour through the roux.
Flour
Cooked in butter, it thickens the sauce into a smooth, coating consistency.
Milk
Gives the sauce a creamy body and mild sweetness, softening the fish flavour.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the fish and balances its richness.

The step that matters

Cook the flour in the butter before adding liquid. Cooking the flour for a few minutes drives off its raw, pasty taste and lets it bind evenly, so the sauce thickens smoothly without lumps when the liquid is added.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, pepper, shallot, parsley, butter, flour, milk):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, pepper, shallot, parsley, butter, flour, milk. 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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