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Boiled Turbot

A whole turbot boiled with salt, lemon, and optional sauces, served with parsley, lemon, and lobster spawn garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Soak the turbot in strong salt and water for 10 minutes.

  2. Rub the fish to remove slime.

  3. Wash the fish carefully in fresh water.

  4. Dry the fish.

  5. Leave the fins on.

  6. Make an incision in the black side to prevent cracking.

  7. Rub the white side with lemon juice.

  8. Rub the white side with a little coarse sea salt.

  9. Ensure the fish kettle is roomy and clean.

Boil and serve

  1. Boil the fish for 25 to 30 minutes, skimming as necessary.

  2. Serve the fish with the white side up on a hot dish.

  3. Place a folded napkin underneath.

  4. Garnish the fish with crimped parsley.

  5. Cut a lemon.

  6. Garnish with lobster spawn.

  7. Serve lobster, hollandaise, or butter sauce separately in a sauce-boat.

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 + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together248 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  4. Lobster + saucetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 boiling liquid until it turns firm and flaky.
Lemon juice
Brightens the flavour of the white skin and adds a light acidity to the fish.

The step that matters

Boil the fish for 25 to 30 minutes, skimming as necessary. Boiling too hard can break up the delicate flesh, while skimming removes foam and impurities that would cloud the cooking liquid and mar the fish's appearance.

“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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