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Turbot, with White Sauce

A turbot fillet simmered with herbs, onion, and leeks, served in a butter‑anchovy‑capers white sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and basil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,768 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Turbot, with White Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the turbot

  1. In a stew-pan, place the sliced onion, thyme, basil, and sweet herbs.

  2. Add the small turbot on top and sprinkle with more herbs, salt, pepper, and the chopped leek.

  3. Pour in the vinegar and white wine, then cover and simmer over moderate heat until cooked through.

Make the white sauce

  1. Meanwhile, melt the butter in a separate pan.

  2. Add the anchovies, capers, chopped leeks, nutmeg, a little vinegar, and water to the melted butter.

  3. Sprinkle in flour and stir constantly until the sauce thickens.

Serve

  1. Once the turbot is done, place it on a serving dish and pour the sauce over it before serving.

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 + basiltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Thyme + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together360 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Basil + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,294 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Onion + leektop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,326 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).

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 the covered pan until it turns flaky and opaque.
Butter
Forms the rich base of the sauce, adding fat and a smooth, velvety texture.
Flour
Thickens the melted butter into a sauce as it is stirred and heated.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the poaching liquid, flavouring the fish as it simmers.
Anchovies
Dissolve into the butter, adding savoury depth to the sauce.
Capers
Add a sharp, briny acidity that cuts through the richness of the butter sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the sauce while the flour goes in. Flour added to hot butter clumps unless it is stirred constantly, so the sauce can become lumpy instead of smooth and thickened.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turbot, thyme, basil, leek, pepper, vinegar, white wine):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turbot, thyme, basil, leek, pepper, vinegar, white wine. 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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