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Baked Fillets of Turbot

Baked fillets of turbot coated with egg, breadcrumbs, parsley, cayenne, and salt, finished with a lobster sauce and lemon garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Turbot and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 248 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Baked Fillets of Turbot

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 the fish

  1. Remove skin and bones from the turbot and cut it into square pieces.

  2. Brush the pieces with egg and sprinkle with bread crumbs mixed with parsley, cayenne, and salt.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the fillets in a baking dish and add enough butter to baste them.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 30 minutes, basting frequently with butter.

  3. Mix lemon juice and nutmeg into the lobster sauce, heat it, and pour over the fish after draining excess butter.

  4. Garnish with parsley and lemon slices.

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. Turbot + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together248 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  4. Turbot + lobstertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together163 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  5. Lobster + saucetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg
Brushed on the fish, it helps the bread crumb coating adhere and brown.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden crust over the delicate fish during baking.
Butter
Adds moisture and richness, and helps the surface brown as it bastes the fish.
Lobster sauce
Adds moisture and rich flavor to the fish when poured over it.

The step that matters

Basting the fish with butter during baking. Turbot is lean and dries out easily in the oven. Frequent basting with melted butter keeps the flesh moist while the crumb coating browns.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turbot, lobster, sauce, egg, bread, pepper, parsley):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Nutmegthe original
  4. Thymefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against turbot, lobster, sauce, egg, bread, pepper, parsley. 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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