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Turbot a LA Creme

Turbot served in a creamy sauce of milk, flour, herbs, and butter, topped with breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Turbot a LA Creme

Oven, in the book's wordsA warm oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a warm oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the sauce

  1. Remove all flesh from the turbot bones and warm the bones in salted water.

  2. In a saucepan, combine flour and milk gradually, mixing until smooth.

  3. Add shallots, parsley, bay leaf, thyme, nutmeg, salt, and pepper to the milk mixture.

  4. Cook over medium heat, stirring until the sauce thickens.

  5. Remove from heat and stir in butter, then strain the sauce.

Assemble and bake

  1. In a baking dish, layer some sauce, then the fish, seasoning lightly with white pepper and salt.

  2. Continue layering with sauce and fish, finishing with sauce on top.

  3. Sprinkle bread crumbs over the top and bake in a warm oven at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

  4. Brown the top with a salamander or broiler 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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  3. Shallot + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Turbot
Provides the flaky fish that forms the body of the dish.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth white sauce as it cooks.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce that keeps the fish moist.
Butter
Adds richness and smoothness to the sauce when stirred in off the heat.
Bread crumbs
Form a topping that browns in the oven for a crisp finish.

The step that matters

Cook the sauce until it thickens. Flour needs to be stirred and heated long enough to swell and set the sauce; undercooked flour leaves a raw, pasty taste and a thin sauce.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turbot, flour, milk, shallot, parsley, thyme, pepper):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Winter savoryfits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turbot, flour, milk, shallot, parsley, thyme, pepper. 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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