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Boiled Turbot

A boiled turbot seasoned with lemon, vinegar, and salt, served with parsley, lemon wedges, and fish sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Boiled Turbot

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the turbot thoroughly and rub it with lemon juice.

  2. In a large pot, bring salted water to a simmer and add vinegar.

Cook and serve

  1. Gently place the fish in the water and cook without boiling.

  2. Cook for 10 minutes per pound plus an additional 10 minutes.

  3. Drain the fish thoroughly and serve on a napkin.

  4. Garnish with parsley and lemon wedges.

  5. Serve with a good fish sauce, hot or cold.

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. Vinegar + parsleytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,477 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + vinegartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,334 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  5. Turbot + vinegartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together132 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

Turbot
Provides the main body of the dish, cooked gently so its flesh stays moist and tender.
Lemon juice
Brightens the flavour of the fish and adds a light acidity.
Vinegar
Adds acidity to the cooking water, giving a slightly sharper, clean flavour to the fish.

The step that matters

Gently place the fish in the water and cook without boiling. At a rolling boil the outer flesh toughens and breaks apart before the centre is cooked. Keeping the water at a gentle simmer cooks the fish evenly and keeps it tender and intact.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turbot, vinegar, parsley, fish sauce):

  1. Limefits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Plumfits less well
  4. Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against turbot, vinegar, parsley, fish sauce. 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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