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Turbot, Boiled

A boiled turbot seasoned with salt and lemon, served with butter or sauces.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley 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 ↓

Turbot, Boiled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Empty the fish and wash it thoroughly inside.

  2. Remove the scales and gills, and trim the fins without cutting them off.

  3. Rub salt all over the outside of the fish to help remove slime.

  4. Wash the fish until clean, then dry it and rub with lemon or vinegar.

  5. Make a shallow cut through the skin on the dark side of the fish's back.

Boil and serve

  1. In a turbot kettle, add enough cold water to cover the fish and dissolve the salt.

  2. Place the turbot on a fish-drainer, white side up, and submerge it in the water.

  3. Bring the water to a boil, skimming off any scum that rises.

  4. Once boiling, reduce heat and simmer gently until the fish is cooked through.

  5. Remove the fish, drain the water, and place it white side up on a hot dish covered with a napkin.

  6. Garnish with parsley, lemon slices, and scraped horseradish.

  7. If the fish is cracked, cover the crack with parsley.

  8. Serve with melted butter, shrimp sauce, anchovy sauce, Dutch sauce, or lobster sauce.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Lemon + horseradishtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Turbot
Is the main component, cooked whole in gently simmering water so its flesh sets moist and flaky.
Coarse sea salt
Rubbed on the skin to draw off slime, and dissolved in the water to season the fish.

The step that matters

Simmer gently once boiling. Once the water boils, lowering the heat to a gentle simmer keeps the flesh tender and intact. A hard boil breaks up the delicate fish and can cause it to crack.

Swap the horseradish

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turbot, lemon, parsley, butter):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Horseradishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turbot, lemon, parsley, 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.

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