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Turbot, Cold, to Serve a Second Time

Cold turbot served with a sauce of milk or cream, anchovy essence, pepper, and coarse sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Turbot and anchovy match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 110 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Turbot, Cold, to Serve a Second Time

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Remove the skin and bones from the turbot and cut the flesh into neat pieces.

Make the sauce

  1. Warm any leftover sauce and stir in ¼ of its quantity in milk or cream.

  2. Add a few drops of anchovy essence and a little pepper and coarse sea salt.

  3. Add the pieces of fish to the sauce and heat through without boiling.

  4. Serve very hot.

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

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

  2. Anchovy + peppertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Milk + peppertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together26,984 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  4. Milk + anchovytop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together574 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

  5. Turbot + milktop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together79 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Turbot
Forms the main body of the dish, providing the flaky flesh that is served.
Milk or cream
Adds richness and a smooth, mellow body to the sauce.
Anchovy essence
Adds a savoury, salty depth to the sauce.

The step that matters

Heat the fish through without boiling. Boiling toughens the delicate proteins in fish and can cause the milk or cream in the sauce to curdle or separate, leaving the fish dry and the sauce grainy.

“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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