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Boiled Turbot

A boiled turbot seasoned with lemon, parsley, salt, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the turbot thoroughly and soak it in a mixture of salt and water for 1 hour.

  2. Rinse the fish in fresh cold water and do not cut off the fins.

  3. Rub the fish all over with lemon juice to whiten the flesh and keep it firm.

  4. Make 2 or 3 incisions in the dark side of the skin to prevent cracking.

Boil and serve

  1. Place the fish in a fish kettle with a bunch of parsley and the juice of 2 lemons.

  2. Boil the fish until cooked through.

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

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  3. Turbot + lemontop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together273 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Turbot
Is the main protein, cooked gently in water until its flesh sets and flakes.
Lemons
Their juice acidifies the surface, helping whiten the flesh and keep it firm.

The step that matters

Making the incisions in the skin. Shallow cuts in the dark skin let steam and expanding heat escape during boiling, which helps prevent the skin from cracking and splitting.

“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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