Why it works: Turbot and lobster work together. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 163 recipes. Both carry octanal, which smells fat, soap. The science ↓
35 Boiled Turbot and Lobster Sauce
Ingredients
Directions
Poach the turbot
Fill a fish kettle with enough water to cover the fish and add salt until the water tastes salty.
Bring the water to a boil, then add the turbot and let it simmer for 20 to 30 minutes.
Make the lobster sauce
For the lobster sauce, remove the flesh from the lobster tail and claws, and cut it into dice.
Dry the coral, pound it with 1 ounce of butter, and rub it through a fine sieve.
In a saucepan, melt 1 ounce of butter with the flour over heat, then add ½ pint of water and stir well.
Boil the sauce for a few minutes, then add the coral butter, lobster pieces, seasoning, and cream.
Mix well and warm thoroughly before serving.
Serve
Serve the turbot on a hot dish, garnished with coral and lemon slices, and present the sauce in a sauceboat.
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.
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Turbot + lobstertop 5% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together163 recipes
Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).
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Lobster + creamtop 6% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,050 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
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Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,516 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Turbot + creamtop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together127 recipes
Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 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
- Turbot
- Is the main fish, cooked gently in simmering water so it stays moist and tender.
- Butter
- Enriches the sauce with fat, adding richness and a smooth mouthfeel.
- Flour
- Thickens the butter and water into a smooth sauce as it cooks.
- Lobster
- Supplies the main flavour and texture of the sauce through its flesh and coral.
- Cream
- Adds richness and a softer, smoother texture to the finished sauce.
The step that matters
Boil the sauce briefly before adding the cream. Boiling the flour-thickened sauce cooks out the raw starch taste and lets it thicken fully. Adding the cream afterward and only warming it keeps the cream from curdling or thinning.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turbot, lobster, butter, flour, cream):
- Vanillafits better
- Raisinfits about as well
- Coconutfits about as well
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against turbot, lobster, butter, flour, cream. 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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