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Turbot

Baked turbot served with a white wine sauce, butter, flour, breadcrumbs, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Turbot

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Rub butter all over a dish and sprinkle with salt, pepper, nutmeg, and parsley.

  3. Pour in 1 cup of white wine and place the turbot in the dish.

  4. Pour another cup of white wine over the fish, then sprinkle with more nutmeg, pepper, salt, and parsley.

Bake

  1. Dot with butter, then strew with flour and bread crumbs.

  2. Bake until golden brown.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Transfer the fish to a serving dish.

  2. Stir the sauce from the baking dish into a saucepan, add a little flour, and bring to a boil.

  3. Stir in butter and ketchup, then pour over the fish.

  4. Garnish with lemon and serve with optional sauces.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  5. Nutmeg + flourtop 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

Turbot
Is the main fish, cooked whole in the wine and butter until flaky and moist.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping the crumb topping brown and the sauce taste rounded.
White wine
Provides moisture and acidity that gently steams the fish and flavours the pan sauce.
Flour
Thickens the pan sauce so it coats the fish instead of running off.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp topping that browns in the oven, adding texture.
Ketchup
Adds sweetness and tang to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Bake until golden brown. Fish is delicate and dries out quickly in a hot oven. Watch for the topping to brown and for the flesh to turn opaque and flake easily, then remove it promptly to keep it moist.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turbot, butter, pepper, parsley, white wine, flour, bread):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Nutmegthe original
  4. Marjoramfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against turbot, butter, pepper, parsley, white wine, flour, bread. 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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