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To Boil Turbot

A boiled turbot seasoned with salt and vinegar, served with small fish, parsley, horseradish, and sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Turbot and lobster work together. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 163 recipes. Both carry octanal, which smells fat, soap. The science ↓

To Boil Turbot

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the turbot without cutting it, then soak it in a mixture of salt, water, and vinegar for a short time.

  2. Place the fish in a fish kettle with the white side up, add plenty of cold water, a handful of salt, and 1 cup of vinegar.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat slowly and boil for 30 minutes after it reaches a boil.

  2. Serve the fish with the white side up on a napkin.

  3. Garnish with fried small fish, parsley, and scraped horseradish.

  4. Serve with lobster sauce, oyster sauce, or plain butter.

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

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  2. Parsley + horseradishtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together562 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Vinegar + horseradishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Turbot + fishtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together153 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Fish + horseradishtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together178 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

What each ingredient does

Turbot
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming firm and flaky as it cooks gently in the liquid.
Vinegar
Adds acidity to the cooking liquid, which helps keep the delicate white flesh firm and fresh-tasting.
Salt
Seasons the fish during soaking and in the cooking liquid, flavouring the flesh throughout.

The step that matters

Heat slowly and boil for 30 minutes after it reaches a boil. Bringing the water up gently and then holding a steady simmer cooks the thick fish evenly. Hard, rapid boiling can break the delicate flesh apart and make it dry and tough.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turbot, fish, vinegar, horseradish, lobster):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Garlicfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against turbot, fish, vinegar, horseradish, lobster. 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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