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Dressing for Turbot

A creamy sauce made from milk, flour, butter, eggs, and seasonings, baked over fish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Dressing for 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.

Make the sauce

  1. Boil the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Thicken the milk with flour until it reaches the consistency of cream.

  3. Season with salt and pepper, then stir in the butter.

  4. Allow the dressing to cool, then add the beaten eggs.

Layer and bake

  1. In a pudding dish, place a layer of fish and cover with dressing.

  2. Sprinkle lightly with finely rolled cracker crumbs.

  3. Repeat layering until all fish is used, finishing with a layer of cracker crumbs on top.

  4. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into a cream-like sauce.
Flour
Starch that thickens the milk and gives the sauce its body.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel.
Eggs
Enrich the sauce and help it set lightly as it bakes.

The step that matters

Allow the dressing to cool, then add the beaten eggs.. Eggs added to very hot sauce can scramble and turn grainy. Cooling the dressing first lets the eggs blend smoothly and set gently during baking.

“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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