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Turbot a LA Creme

A baked turbot dish layered with fish, cream sauce, breadcrumbs, and mashed potato border.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Turbot a LA Creme

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the fish

  1. Boil the turbot and remove all the flesh from the bones while it's still hot.

Make the sauce

  1. Combine 1 pint of milk with a little thyme, parsley, and 2 bay leaves in a saucepan.

  2. Simmer the mixture for 20 minutes.

  3. Rub 2 oz of butter into 1 oz of flour.

  4. Gradually stir the butter-flour mixture into the sauce until it thickens.

  5. Add the yolk of 1 egg, along with pepper and salt to taste.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line the bottom of a pudding dish with the sauce.

  2. Layer the fish on top of the sauce.

  3. Repeat the sauce and fish layers until the dish is full.

  4. Sprinkle the top layer with bread crumbs and dot with pieces of butter.

  5. Create a border of mashed potatoes around the edges of the dish.

  6. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until brown.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Turbot
Forms the flaky body of the dish once cooked and layered with sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which is thickened to coat the fish.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and browns the top crust when dotted over the bread crumbs.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce when combined with butter.
Egg
Adds richness and body to the sauce through its yolk.

The step that matters

Gradually stir the butter-flour mixture into the sauce until it thickens. Adding the roux all at once can leave lumps, and the sauce must be stirred while it thickens so the flour starches swell evenly and the sauce turns smooth rather than grainy.

Swap the thyme

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Thymethe original
  4. Tarragonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against turbot, milk, parsley, butter, flour, egg, pepper. 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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