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Turbot and Brill

A baked turbot served with Parisian sauce, breadcrumbs, consommé, wine, and garnished with crayfish tails, mussels, oysters, mushrooms, and truffles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 and Brill

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Poach the fish

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Simmer the turbot in the oven for about 45 minutes, basting every 5 minutes.

  3. Drain the turbot and let it cool, reserving the cooking liquid.

  4. Mix the reserved liquid with Parisian sauce for garnishing.

Glaze and bake

  1. Once cooled, place the turbot on a buttered baking sheet.

  2. Spread a thin layer of reduced Allemande sauce over the fish.

  3. Sprinkle with finely sifted breadcrumbs and moisten with consommé and wine.

  4. Bake for 20 minutes until warmed through.

Garnish and serve

  1. Gently slide the turbot onto a serving dish and garnish with the prepared sauce.

  2. Decorate with crayfish tails, mussels, oysters, button mushrooms, and truffles tossed in glaze.

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. Mushroom + truffletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,900 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. White wine + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  4. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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 and provides the flesh that is poached and then baked.
Breadcrumbs
Form a crisp, golden crust on top of the fish as it bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the fish and sauce brown lightly on the baking sheet.
Consommé
Moistens the fish and breadcrumbs so the surface does not dry out during baking.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma that moisten and lightly flavour the fish during baking.

The step that matters

Let the turbot cool before glazing. Spreading sauce and sprinkling crumbs on hot fish makes the coating slide off and turn soggy. Cooling first lets the sauce cling and keeps the fish from overcooking when baked again.

“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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