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To Boil Turbot

A whole turbot boiled in salted vinegar water, served with parsley, lemon, horseradish, lobster sauce, anchovy butter, and plain butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon 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 ↓

To Boil Turbot

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the fish

  1. Place the turbot in a kettle and cover it completely with cold water.

  2. Add a handful of coarse sea salt and ⅓ cup of vinegar.

  3. Gradually bring the water to a boil, skimming off any impurities.

Serve

  1. Serve the fish garnished with curled parsley, lemon, and horseradish.

  2. Serve lobster sauce, anchovy butter, and plain butter in separate tureens.

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. Parsley + lemontop 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. Parsley + horseradishtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together562 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Lobster + saucetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,095 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
Is the main protein that is gently poached whole in the water.
Vinegar
Adds a slight acidity to the poaching liquid.
Plain butter
Adds richness and fat as a separate accompaniment to the fish.

The step that matters

Gradually bring the water to a boil, skimming off any impurities.. Heating slowly and gently keeps the fish tender and firm rather than tough, and skimming removes the foam and impurities that would otherwise cloud the liquid and mar the flesh.

“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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