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Boiled Turbot and Lobster Sauce or Sauce Hollandaise

A sauce made from lobster, butter, flour, water, cream, lemon, and seasonings, served with boiled turbot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Boiled Turbot and Lobster Sauce or Sauce Hollandaise

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the turbot

  1. Bring a large pot of water to a boil, ensuring it reaches 3 to 4 inches above the fish.

  2. Add enough salt to the boiling water to taste and skim off any foam.

  3. Rub the white side of the turbot with half a lemon, then place it in the pot.

  4. Simmer the turbot slowly for about 30 minutes, or until cooked through.

  5. Remove the fish and serve on a dish, garnished with thin lemon slices.

Make the lobster sauce

  1. Remove the flesh from the lobster's body and claws, then cut it into small dice.

  2. Pound the coral of the lobster with a bit of butter and strain it through a fine sieve.

  3. In a saucepan, combine the remaining butter and flour, add the water, and bring to a boil.

  4. Stir in the lobster coral, anchovy sauce, and season with salt, pepper, and cayenne.

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 + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Turbot + anchovytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together110 recipes

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

  3. Lobster + anchovytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together470 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  5. Lobster + creamtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the sauce and gives it a smooth, rich body when combined with flour.
Flour
Thickens the sauce by swelling in the hot liquid to form a smooth base.
Lobster
Provides the main flavour and the coral, which colours and enriches the sauce.
Cream
Adds moisture and a softer, richer texture to the finished sauce.
Turbot
Serves as the main fish, cooked gently in simmering water until flaky.

The step that matters

Simmer the turbot slowly. Gentle simmering cooks the fish evenly and keeps it moist, while a rolling boil can toughen the proteins and break the flesh apart.

“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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