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To Boil a Turbot

A boiled turbot served with a lobster butter sauce and garnished with horseradish and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 ↓

To Boil a Turbot

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Soak the turbot in a mixture of salt and water for 1–2 hours, changing the water 5–6 times if needed.

  2. Fill the mouth and belly of the fish with salt.

Poach the turbot

  1. Combine spring water, salt, vinegar, and horseradish in a fish kettle and bring the mixture to a boil.

  2. Place the turbot on a fish plate and lower it into the boiling water, cooking until just done.

  3. Remove the fish kettle from heat and let the fish drain on the plate.

Make the lobster sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a pan.

  2. Add the lobster spawn, chopped lobster meat, and anchovy liquor, then bring the mixture to a boil.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce into bowls and serve with the fish.

  2. Garnish the dish with scraped horseradish and lemon.

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. Lobster + anchovytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together470 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  3. Turbot + lobstertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together163 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  4. Horseradish + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Vinegar + horseradishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 gently in simmering-hot water until its flesh turns opaque and firm.
Lobster spawn
Adds rich flavour and a silky, thickening body to the butter sauce.
Lobster meat
Provides sweet, tender pieces of shellfish that give the sauce substance.
Fresh butter
Forms the fat base of the sauce, giving it a smooth, rich mouthfeel.
Anchovy liquor
Contributes a salty, savoury depth that rounds out the shellfish flavour.

The step that matters

Lowering the turbot into the boiling water. Gentle, just-done cooking keeps the delicate flesh moist and tender; overcooking dries it and makes it flake apart and turn tough as the proteins tighten.

“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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