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Turbot

A baked turbot fillet topped with a creamy milk, flour, butter, and egg sauce, finished with breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and thyme are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,585 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Turbot

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. Steam the whitefish until tender, then remove the bones and flake the fish finely.

  2. Season the fish with pepper and salt.

Make the dressing

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan and thicken it with the flour.

  2. Once cool, add the eggs and butter, then season with a little onion and thyme.

Bake and serve

  1. In a baking dish, layer the fish and dressing until full.

  2. Cover the top with bread crumbs and bake at 350°F (175°C) for half an hour.

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. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  2. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Whitefish
Forms the main body of the dish and gives it its flaky texture.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth dressing that holds the fish together.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the dressing, adding moisture and richness.
Eggs
Add structure and set the dressing as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat, richness and flavour to the dressing.

The step that matters

Cooling the dressing before adding the eggs. If the thickened milk is still hot when the eggs go in, they can scramble instead of blending smoothly, leaving a grainy dressing that will not set evenly in the oven.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (whitefish, pepper, milk, flour, butter, egg, thyme):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against whitefish, pepper, milk, flour, butter, egg, thyme. 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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