Skip to main content
Main

Turbot a LA Creme Au Gratin

A baked turbot topped with a béchamel and Parmesan sauce, finished with breadcrumbs and fried potato croquettes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Turbot a LA Creme Au Gratin

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 and sauce

  1. Boil the turbot and drain it on a dish.

  2. While it cools, prepare a cream Béchamel sauce.

  3. Reduce the sauce and add the egg yolks, Parmesan cheese, minionette pepper, nutmeg, and lemon juice.

  4. Cut the turbot into flakes, including the fins and cheeks, and mix with the sauce.

Bake and serve

  1. Shape the mixture into a dome on a dish and cover with bread crumbs mixed with some grated Parmesan cheese.

  2. Garnish with fried potato croquettes.

  3. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 20 minutes to gratinate.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  5. Parmesan cheese + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,163 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Turbot
Forms the main body of the dish, providing flaky fish that sets into the gratin.
Egg yolks
Enrich the sauce and help bind the fish mixture as it heats, giving a set, custard-like texture.
Parmesan cheese
Adds savoury depth and helps the top brown during baking.
Béchamel sauce (in the method)
Provides a creamy base that holds the fish together and keeps it moist.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp topping that browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Reduce the sauce before adding the egg yolks. If the sauce is too hot when the yolks go in, they can scramble and turn grainy. Reducing the sauce first and adding the yolks off direct heat keeps the mixture smooth and evenly set.

“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.

You might also like

Fried BreadFried Bread30 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesPotato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipes