Why it works: Turbot and lobster work together. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 163 recipes. Both carry octanal, which smells fat, soap. The science ↓
To Boil a Turbot
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the fish
Wash the Turbot thoroughly but do not soak it in water.
Rub the fish with vinegar and place it on a fish plate, white side up.
Cover with a cloth and pin it tight under the plate.
Boil and serve
Place the fish in a kettle with cold water, add salt and vinegar.
Boil gradually for about 20 minutes.
Carefully remove the fish, drain it, and transfer it to a serving dish.
Garnish with fried oysters or eels and serve with lobster or shrimp sauce.
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.
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Turbot + lobstertop 5% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together163 recipes
Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).
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Turbot + oystertop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-octenal (fatty, green).
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Oyster + lobstertop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together255 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
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Vinegar + lobstertop 25% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together692 recipes
Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).
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Turbot + vinegartop 26% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together132 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, its firm white flesh setting as it cooks.
- Vinegar
- Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps keep the white flesh pale and firm.
The step that matters
Boil gradually. Bringing the water up slowly from cold lets the fish cook evenly from edge to centre. Vigorous boiling can break the delicate flesh apart and toughen it.
“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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