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Turbot a LA Creme

A baked turbot and oyster dish topped with bread crumbs and butter, served in a creamy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Turbot a LA Creme

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Prepare 1 pint of white sauce.

Assemble

  1. In a well-buttered pudding dish, layer the fish and oysters, alternating with the white sauce.

  2. Sprinkle coarse sea salt over the layers.

  3. Top with bread or cracker crumbs and small bits of butter.

  4. Baste with a little cold water before baking.

Bake

  1. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 20 minutes, or until the top is browned.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Fish + oystertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together496 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Fish + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cod or other white fish
Forms the flaky body of the dish, setting into tender layers as it cooks.
Oysters
Add briny, savoury flavour and a soft, moist texture to the layers.
White sauce
Binds the fish and oysters together and keeps the layers moist as they bake.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the crumb topping brown in the oven.
Bread or cracker crumbs
Form a crisp, golden crust on top during baking.

The step that matters

Bake until the top is browned. Baking at 400°F for about 20 minutes lets the crumbs and butter brown. Stopping too early leaves the topping pale and soft, while going too long can dry out the fish and sauce beneath.

“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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