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To Boil Turbot

A method for boiling a turbot with lemon, salt, and optional garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

To Boil Turbot

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Rub the turbot with lemon to whiten it.

  2. Cover the fish with cold water and add the salt.

Poach

  1. Heat the kettle slowly; do not let it boil too quickly.

  2. Skim the surface carefully as it heats.

  3. Once boiling, reduce heat and simmer for 25 to 30 minutes.

  4. To prevent cracking, wrap the fish in a cloth fastened under the strainer.

Serve

  1. Serve with lobster sauce, melted butter, or any fish sauce in separate tureens.

  2. Garnish with parsley, lemon slices, and horseradish.

  3. If there are cracks, cover them with garnish and a little lobster-coral.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  3. Turbot + parsleytop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together264 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  4. Parsley + lobstertop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together890 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  5. Turbot + lemontop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together273 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Turbot
Is the main fish, cooked whole in gently simmering water so its flesh sets moist and tender.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the poaching water so the fish is flavoured through its flesh as it cooks.

The step that matters

Heat the water slowly and keep it from boiling hard. Vigorous boiling toughens the delicate fish flesh and makes it more likely to crack and break apart. Gentle heat lets the proteins set gradually and keeps the fish intact.

“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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