Skip to main content
Main

Turbot

A filleted turbot fried in lard and finished in a claret and white wine sauce with anchovy, nutmeg, ginger, butter, lemon, and shallot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Turbot and anchovy match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 110 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Turbot

Ingredients

Directions

Fry the fish

  1. Dust the cleaned and dried turbot with flour.

  2. Heat enough hot lard in a pan to cover the fish and fry until golden brown.

  3. Carefully remove the fish and drain excess fat.

Make the sauce

  1. In the same pan, add claret and white wine to nearly cover the fish, along with the anchovy, salt, nutmeg, and ginger.

  2. Return the turbot to the pan and simmer until the liquid reduces by half.

  3. Add the butter rolled in flour and minced lemon, and simmer until thickened.

Serve

  1. Rub a hot dish with shallot, place the turbot in it, pour the sauce over, 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. Turbot + anchovytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together110 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Nutmeg + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. White wine + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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, cooked by frying and then gently simmering in the wine sauce.
Flour
Coats the fish so it browns in the hot lard, and thickens the sauce with the butter.
Butter
Adds richness and, rolled in flour, helps thicken the simmering sauce.
Claret wine
Forms the main body of the sauce, adding acidity and deep flavour as it reduces.
White wine
Adds acidity and lightness to the sauce as it reduces with the claret.

The step that matters

Frying the floured fish in hot lard. The fish must be well dried and floured before frying in hot fat. Wet fish spatters and steams instead of browning, and flour helps form a golden crust that holds its shape in the sauce.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turbot, flour, wine, white wine, anchovy, nutmeg, butter):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turbot, flour, wine, white wine, anchovy, nutmeg, butter. 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

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes