Name: Turbot, Boiled
Ingredients: 1 turbot; coarse sea salt; 1 lemon; 1 glass of white wine or vinegar; 1 onion pricked with a clove; a bunch of herbs; pepper

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 ↓

Turbot, Boiled

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Empty and wash the inside of the turbot.
Rub a little coarse sea salt over the outside to remove slime, then wash in several waters.
Make an incision in the skin of the back nearly to the bone to prevent cracking.
Do not cut off the fins.
Rub the fish with lemon juice.
In a saucepan, combine 1 quart of water with white wine or vinegar.
Add the pricked onion, herbs, salt, and pepper.
Boil this mixture for ½ hour.
Strain and let it cool.

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.

Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together17,451 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Lemon + clovetop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,150 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Lemon + white winetop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,832 recipes

Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).
Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together68,474 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turbot, lemon, white wine, clove, pepper):

Shallotfits better
Capsicumfits better
Leekfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turbot, lemon, white wine, clove, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.