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Turbot a LA Creme

A baked turbot dish with a creamy sauce made from milk, flour, egg yolks, and butter, topped with cracker dust and cheese.

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

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.

Prepare the fish

  1. Shred the hot boiled fish and set aside to cool.

Make the cream sauce

  1. In a pot, boil the milk with the onion and parsley.

  2. Mix the flour with a little cold milk, then add to the boiling milk and stir until it thickens.

  3. Remove the onion and parsley, then stir in the beaten egg yolks.

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

Bake and serve

  1. Butter a pudding dish and layer the fish and cream, finishing with cream on top.

  2. Sift cracker dust and grated cheese over the top.

  3. 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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  3. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Fish
Forms the bulk of the dish as flaky pieces held together by the cream.
Milk
Forms the base of the cream sauce that moistens the fish.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce as it heats.
Egg yolks
Enrich the sauce and help it set into a custard-like texture when baked.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the sauce and the dish.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the boiling milk. Flour added to hot milk without enough stirring can form lumps. Mixing it first with a little cold milk helps it disperse, so the sauce thickens smoothly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, milk, parsley, flour, egg, 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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