Skip to main content
Main

Turbot, Holibut, and Brill, Boiled

Boiled turbot, halibut, or brill with coarse sea salt, garnished with smelts, gudgeons, lobster coral, horseradish, lemon, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Turbot, Holibut, and Brill, Boiled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and poach

  1. Score the skin across the thick part of the back to prevent breaking.

  2. Place the fish in a kettle with cold water and add the salt.

  3. Bring to a boil, skim well, then reduce heat to simmer for 15-20 minutes. Ensure the fish simmers slowly to avoid breaking.

Garnish and serve

  1. Garnish with smelts or gudgeons arranged like spokes of a wheel.

  2. If available, pound lobster coral, rub through a colander, and sprinkle over the fish.

  3. Serve with horseradish, sliced lemon, and parsley.

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 + smelttop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together26 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  4. Horseradish + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together562 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Horseradish + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Turbot, halibut, or brill
Is the main fish, cooked whole and gently poached until its flesh turns opaque and flakes.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the poaching water so the fish is flavoured throughout as it cooks.

The step that matters

Keep the simmer slow and gentle. A rolling boil agitates and tears the delicate flesh, so the fish breaks apart. Bring it to a boil only briefly, skim, then hold a slow simmer.

Swap the horseradish

The recipe marks horseradish as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turbot, smelt, lobster, lemon, parsley):

  1. Horseradishthe original
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Spinachfits less well
  4. Carrotfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against turbot, smelt, lobster, lemon, parsley. 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesLobster SauceLobster Sauce174 recipesLobster CroquettesLobster Croquettes99 recipesHorseradish SauceHorseradish Sauce17 recipes