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Turbot, Plain Boiled

A simple boiled turbot seasoned with lemon and salt, served with parsley and sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Turbot and lemon work together. They rank in the top 28% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 273 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Turbot, Plain Boiled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Wash the turbot and wipe it dry.

  2. Rub the fish with lemon juice and a little salt.

Poach

  1. Place it in a fish kettle and cover with water.

  2. Add a handful of salt and bring to a boil.

  3. Once boiling, reduce heat and simmer for about 30 minutes, depending on the size of the fish.

  4. Skim the water and carefully lift the turbot onto a drainer.

Serve

  1. Slide the fish onto a dish covered with a folded napkin.

  2. Garnish with picked parsley and serve with lobster sauce or Dutch sauce.

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. 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; poaching in gentle water cooks it through while keeping the flesh moist and tender.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the mild flavour of the fish.

The step that matters

Simmering the turbot. Once boiling, the heat must be reduced so the water only simmers. A hard boil toughens the delicate proteins and can break up the flesh, while gentle heat cooks it evenly through.

“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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