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Turbot, Patties or Vol-au-vents of

A puff pastry dish filled with seasoned turbot in a thickened cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Turbot, Patties or Vol-au-vents of

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pastry

  1. Line patty pans with puff pastry or make small vol-au-vents.

  2. Bake until golden brown.

Make the filling

  1. Finely mince the white meat of the turbot and season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  2. In a saucepan, heat 2-3 tablespoons of thick cream.

  3. Thicken the cream by boiling it with a slice of butter rolled in flour.

  4. Once hot, add the minced fish to the cream and heat through.

  5. Ensure the mixture is thick enough to avoid soaking through the pastry.

Serve

  1. Fill the hot patties or vol-au-vents with the hot fish mixture and serve.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Turbot + creamtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together127 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Puff pastry
Forms the crisp, flaky case that holds the filling.
White meat of turbot
Provides the main filling, becoming tender and delicate when gently heated.
Thick cream
Adds richness and moisture to bind the minced fish into a creamy filling.
Butter and flour
Together form a roux-style paste that thickens the cream so it will not soak the pastry.

The step that matters

Thickening the cream. If the cream is not thick enough, the moisture from the filling will soak through the puff pastry and make it soggy. Boiling the cream with the butter and flour thickens it so the filling holds its shape.

“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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