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Turbot Kettle

A boiled turbot served with melted butter and various sauces, garnished with parsley, lemon, and horseradish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Turbot Kettle

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the turbot

  1. Bring a pot of water to a boil and add coarse sea salt.

  2. Lay the turbot on a fish drainer, white side up.

  3. Once the water boils, lower the turbot into the pot and simmer gently.

  4. Cook for 15-20 minutes for a moderate-sized turbot, or 20-35 minutes for a large one.

  5. Check for doneness when the flesh shrinks from the bone.

  6. Remove the turbot from the pot and drain the water.

Serve

  1. Place the turbot on a hot dish, white side up, covered with a napkin or fish paper.

  2. Garnish with parsley, lemon, and horseradish.

  3. Serve with melted butter, shrimp sauce, anchovy sauce, Dutch sauce, or lobster sauce.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Turbot + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together248 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sauce + anchovytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Turbot + anchovytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together110 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Parsley + horseradishtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together562 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Turbot
Is the main fish, cooked gently in simmering water so its flesh turns firm and flakes.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the poaching water so the fish is seasoned lightly as it cooks.

The step that matters

Simmer gently and check doneness. Boiling vigorously toughens and breaks up delicate fish flesh. Gentle simmering cooks it evenly. Checking that the flesh pulls away from the bone shows it is done without overcooking.

Swap the horseradish

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turbot, parsley, lemon, butter, shrimp, sauce, anchovy):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Horseradishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turbot, parsley, lemon, butter, shrimp, sauce, anchovy. 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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