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Turbot a LA Heine

A sautéed turbot dish with flour, butter, stock, spices, cream, oysters, and lemon, served with fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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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 Heine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the dressed turbot into slices.

  2. Mix flour and butter.

Make the sauce

  1. Moisten with stock.

  2. Season with pepper, salt, nutmeg, and lemon peel.

  3. Add cream and the fish.

  4. Include the well-stewed oysters.

Finish and serve

  1. Mix egg yolks with cream and lemon juice.

  2. Add to the dish without boiling.

  3. Serve garnished with fried bread 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. 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. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 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

Flour
Thickens the stock and butter mixture into a smooth base for the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and helps bind the flour into a smooth roux.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce when gently combined without boiling.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, softening the sauce's texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Add the egg yolk and cream mixture without boiling. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat; if the sauce boils, the yolks can scramble and curdle, leaving a grainy texture.

“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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