Skip to main content
Main

Turbot, the New French Fashion

Turbot served with boiled potatoes, melted butter sauce, and capers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Potato and capers work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 224 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Turbot, the New French Fashion

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the turbot as directed previously.

  2. Place the boiled turbot on a dish without a napkin.

Serve

  1. Surround the turbot with a border of well-boiled small potatoes.

  2. Sauce the turbot with thick melted butter.

  3. Sprinkle a few capers over the top and serve.

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. Potato + caperstop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together224 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Butter + potatotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Turbot + caperstop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together47 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  4. Butter + caperstop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,637 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Turbot + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together372 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
Is the main fish, cooked whole and served as the centre of the dish.
Melted butter
Adds richness and a smooth, flowing sauce that coats the fish.
Potatoes
Provide a mild, starchy border that soaks up butter and balances the rich fish.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turbot, butter, capers):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turbot, butter, capers. 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.

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesPotato ChipsPotato Chips53 recipesSweet Potato CroquettesSweet Potato Croquettes53 recipes