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To Dress Turbot the Second Day

Breaded leftover boiled turbot in sauce, fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Turbot and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 248 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

To Dress Turbot the Second Day

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the leftover boiled turbot into small pieces.

  2. Warm the fish pieces in a good sauce of your choice.

Bread and fry

  1. In a stewpan, melt hog's lard or beef suet for frying.

  2. Dip the fish pieces in egg yolks.

  3. Coat the fish pieces with bread crumbs and minced parsley.

  4. Fry the coated fish in the hot fat until golden brown.

  5. Remove the fish with a fish trowel.

  6. Place the fish on a rack to drain and keep warm.

  7. Strain the used fat into a can for future frying, ensuring it is clean.

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  3. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Bread + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,588 recipes

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

  5. Beef + parsleytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,866 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Leftover boiled turbot
Forms the flaky main body of the dish once cut into pieces.
Yolks of eggs
Acts as a binding coat that helps the bread crumbs adhere to the fish.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden browned crust when fried in hot fat.
Hog's lard or beef suet
Serves as the frying fat that conducts heat and browns the crumb coating.

The step that matters

Fry the coated fish in the hot fat until golden brown. The fat must be hot enough to crisp the crumb coating quickly. If it is too cool, the crumbs absorb fat and turn greasy before browning, and the fish can overheat or dry out while waiting.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turbot, sauce, beef, egg, bread):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against turbot, sauce, beef, egg, bread. 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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