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Turbot Pie

A pie made with marinated turbot, hard‑boiled eggs, cheese sauce, optional macaroni, and puff pastry, baked and garnished with fried parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the fish

  1. Marinate the fish in lemon juice, white wine, salt, and pepper for 1 hour.

  2. If preferred, soak the fish in warm cream instead of marinating.

  3. Prepare a rich sauce using fish bones and egg yolks.

Assemble the pie

  1. Make the pie by piling the fish in a dome shape.

  2. Add hard-boiled eggs and pour cheese sauce over the fish.

  3. If desired, mix in cooked macaroni.

  4. Cover with puff pastry and decorate with leaves.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for about 1 hour.

  2. Serve on a folded napkin, garnished with fried parsley and prawns or shrimp if using shellfish 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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Lemon + white winetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  5. White wine + cheesetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together345 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Turbot or other white fish
Forms the main body of the pie and sets into flaky, tender pieces when baked.
Egg yolks
Enrich the sauce, adding richness and helping it thicken smoothly.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add firm texture and mild richness to the filling.
Cheese sauce
Adds moisture and savory richness that coats the fish and keeps it from drying out.
Puff pastry
Forms a crisp, golden, flaky crust that browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Marinate the fish in lemon juice and wine. Acid from lemon juice and wine firms and partly cooks the fish surface, changing its texture. Timing matters, since marinating too long can make the fish tough and chalky.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, lemon, white wine, pepper, egg, cheese, sauce):

  1. Tarragonfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Marjoramfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, lemon, white wine, pepper, egg, cheese, sauce. 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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