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Turbot a LA Creme

A baked turbot dish topped with a butter‑flour‑milk sauce and bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

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.

Make the cream sauce

  1. Scald the sweet milk in a saucepan.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix the butter and flour until smooth.

  3. Stir the butter and flour mixture into the hot milk and let it thicken.

Assemble and bake

  1. Butter a fire-proof dish and layer the flaked fish and dressing alternately, finishing with dressing on top.

  2. Sprinkle sifted bread crumbs over the top.

  3. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 30 minutes or until heated through.

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. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Boiled turbot
Provides the main body of the dish as flaked fish.
Sweet milk
Forms the liquid base of the cream sauce that moistens the fish.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the sauce and helps prevent the crumbs from drying out.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce when cooked with it.

The step that matters

Let the sauce thicken before layering. Flour needs to be stirred into hot milk and given time to heat so its starch swells and thickens the sauce. If the sauce stays thin, the dish will be watery after baking.

“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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