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Turbot a LA Creme

A baked turbot dish layered with a creamy milk and thyme sauce, topped with rolled crackers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 large white fish until cooked, then flake it into fine pieces.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the milk, thyme, parsley, and onion; simmer until well flavored.

  2. In a separate bowl, wet the flour and stir it into the butter over low heat until thickened.

  3. Strain the thickened mixture into the saucepan with the milk, then stir in the egg yolks.

  4. Season the sauce with pepper and salt.

Assemble and bake

  1. In a pudding dish, layer some sauce, then a layer of fish, repeating until the dish is full, finishing with sauce on top.

  2. Cover with rolled crackers and brown in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

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. Thyme + oniontop 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. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  5. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

White fish
Forms the main body of the dish, providing the flaky texture and substance.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, giving it a smooth, creamy body.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk mixture so the sauce becomes stable and spoonable.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor and helping the flour thicken smoothly.
Egg yolks
Enriches and thickens the sauce, adding richness and a silkier texture.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently. If the sauce is too hot when they go in, they can scramble and become grainy, so add them off the heat or with the sauce only warm.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, milk, thyme, parsley, flour, butter, egg. 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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