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Turbot K LA Clarence — Lenten

A fish soup made with haddock, turbot, shellfish, and herbs, simmered and thickened with Madeira.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Turbot K LA Clarence — Lenten

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Cover the haddock and fish trimmings with cold water in a pot.

  2. Bring to a boil, then add onion, carrots, celery, herbs, and salt.

  3. Cook for at least 1 hour, then strain the broth until clear.

Make the soup

  1. In another saucepan, combine the clear broth with turbot, hot spices, red peppers, bay leaf, and red capsicum.

  2. Cook slowly for 45 minutes, then add oysters, shrimps, lobster, lemon juice, and Madeira.

  3. Heat gently without boiling, and thicken some of the soup for 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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Haddock + turbottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together12 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Pepper + capsicumtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,571 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Carrot + capsicumtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,140 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  5. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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 soup and gives it its fish flavour and firm flakes.
Haddock
Adds body and flavour to the broth that the soup is built on.
Oysters
Add a briny, delicate seafood flavour to the finished soup.
Madeira
Adds sweetness and depth to the soup at the end of cooking.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich seafood flavours.

The step that matters

Heat gently without boiling. Boiling toughens the delicate fish and shellfish, making them rubbery and cloudy, and can cause the thickened sauce to break or separate. Keeping the soup just below a boil preserves tender texture and a smooth, clear result.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (haddock, carrot, celery, turbot, pepper, capsicum, oyster):

  1. Tomatofits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against haddock, carrot, celery, turbot, pepper, capsicum, oyster. 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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