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Turbot a LA Creme Au Gratin

A turbot fillet baked in a creamy béchamel sauce with egg yolks, Parmesan, pepper, nutmeg, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Turbot and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 248 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Turbot a LA Creme Au Gratin

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Boil the turbot and drain it on a dish.

  2. While it cools, prepare cream béchamel sauce.

Make the gratin

  1. Reduce the sauce and add the egg yolks, Parmesan cheese, mignonette pepper, nutmeg, and lemon juice.

  2. Cut the turbot into flakes and add to the sauce, ensuring no delicate parts are wasted.

  3. Stir gently and shape the mixture into a dome on the dish.

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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, providing flaked fish texture.
Egg yolks
Enrich the sauce and help it set into a creamy, cohesive mixture.
Parmesan cheese
Adds savory, salty flavor and helps the sauce brown and firm up.
Cream béchamel sauce
Binds the flaked fish together and gives the gratin its moist, rich texture.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks to the reduced sauce. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently, but if the sauce is too hot they can scramble and turn grainy. Reduce heat and stir steadily so the sauce stays smooth and creamy.

“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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