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Turbot a LA Creme

A dish of turbot cooked in a sauce of cream, milk, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Turbot and cream work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 127 recipes. Both carry octanal, which smells fat, soap. The science ↓

Turbot a LA Creme

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Carefully remove the flesh from the bones of the cold turbot and discard the dark skin.

  2. Cut the fish into small squares and place it in a clean saucepan.

Make and serve

  1. Prepare a cream sauce using equal parts milk and cream, adding a little flour.

  2. Heat the turbot slowly in the sauce without allowing it to boil.

  3. Serve the dish very hot, optionally leaving the white skin on for a family dinner.

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

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  2. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

  4. Turbot + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together143 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, giving it body with the cream.
Flour
Thickens the milk and cream into a smooth sauce.
Cold turbot
Provides the delicate white fish flesh that is the main ingredient.

The step that matters

Heat the turbot slowly without boiling. Boiling a cream sauce can cause it to separate and turn grainy, and overheating toughens delicate fish flesh. Gentle heating keeps the sauce smooth and the fish tender.

“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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