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Fish Turbot

Baked fish turbot with a milk and flour sauce, topped with breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread 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 ↓

Fish Turbot

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the fish

  1. Boil the white fish until tender, then remove the bones.

  2. Sprinkle the fish with pepper and salt.

Make the sauce

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan and thicken it with flour.

  2. Once cool, add the eggs, butter, and chopped onion or parsley to the sauce.

Bake and serve

  1. In a baking dish, layer the fish and sauce until full.

  2. Cover the top with bread crumbs and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 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. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

White fish
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes flaky when cooked through.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce that holds the layers together.
Eggs
Add richness and help the sauce set and bind when baked.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, rounded flavour to the sauce.
Milk
Forms the base of the sauce, which thickens with flour and moistens the fish.

The step that matters

Thickening the milk with flour. Flour must be cooked into the hot milk so its starch swells and thickens the sauce evenly. If it is added cold or lumpy, the sauce stays grainy or thin, and it will not bind the fish layers properly once baked.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, pepper, milk, flour, egg, butter, bread):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, pepper, milk, flour, egg, butter, bread. 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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