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Turbot

A whole turbot is soaked, then boiled with salt, spring water, and horseradish until cooked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Turbot and horseradish work together. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 70 recipes. Both carry octanal, which smells fat, soap. The science ↓

Turbot

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the turbot in plenty of salt and water for 1 hour.

  2. In the meantime, fill a fish kettle with spring water, add salt, and the piece of horseradish.

Poach and drain

  1. Place the turbot belly side up on a fish plate and put it in the kettle.

  2. Boil the turbot slowly for 30 to 45 minutes, depending on thickness, until cooked through but not overdone.

  3. Once done, remove the fish kettle from heat and set it before the fire.

  4. Carefully lift the fish plate and set it across the kettle to drain.

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. Turbot + horseradishtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together70 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

What each ingredient does

Turbot
Is the main protein; gentle simmering firms its flesh into flakes while keeping it moist.
Salt
Seasons the fish and firms its flesh during the soak.

The step that matters

Boiling the turbot slowly. Gentle heat cooks the fish through evenly while keeping the flesh tender and moist. Boiling hard breaks up the flakes and toughens the protein, so the fish becomes dry and overdone.

“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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