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Fish Turbot

A baked fish dish with milk, flour, butter, and herbs, topped with cracker crumbs and cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

Fish Turbot

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the fish

  1. Boil the fish until cooked.

  2. Remove all bones and shred the fish finely.

Make the sauce

  1. Bring milk, onion, and parsley to a boil.

  2. Mix flour with cold milk and egg yolks.

  3. Stir the mixture into the boiling milk.

  4. Season with white pepper, thyme, butter, and salt.

Assemble and bake

  1. Butter a baking pan.

  2. Layer sauce, fish, and finish with sauce on top.

  3. Sprinkle with cracker crumbs and cheese.

  4. Bake for 1 hour at 350°F (175°C).

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. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + thymetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Haddock or whitefish
Provides the flaked body of the dish, forming the bulk of the layers.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the milk sauce as its starch swells with heat, giving it body.
Egg yolks
Enrich the sauce and help it set creamy and rich when baked.
Milk
Forms the base of the sauce, supplying moisture and a mild, creamy flavor.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the sauce, carrying flavor and smoothing texture.
Cheese
Melts and browns on top, adding savoriness and a golden crust.

The step that matters

Stir the flour mixture into the boiling milk. Flour must be fully blended before heating so it does not clump; once it meets hot milk, starch swells and thickens the sauce, and lumps are hard to fix.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (haddock, milk, onion, parsley, flour, egg, thyme):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against haddock, milk, onion, parsley, flour, egg, thyme. 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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