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Turbot a LA Creme

A baked turbot layered with a creamy sauce made from milk, thyme, parsley, onion, flour, butter, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Turbot a LA Creme

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the fish

  1. Boil the fish until cooked, then remove the bones and flake the fish.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine milk, thyme, parsley, and onion; simmer until well flavored.

  2. Wet the flour with a little water, then stir it into the milk mixture along with the butter; cook until thickened.

  3. Strain the sauce over the egg yolks and season with pepper and salt.

Assemble and bake

  1. In a pudding dish, layer sauce and fish alternately until the dish is full, finishing with sauce on top.

  2. Cover the dish with rolled crackers.

  3. Sprinkle grated cheese on top if desired.

  4. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until browned.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Thyme + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

What each ingredient does

White fish
Forms the main body of the dish, flaked and layered through the sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which is flavored with the herbs and onion.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the milk mixture into a smooth sauce as it cooks.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the sauce.
Egg yolks
Enriches and thickens the sauce, adding richness and body.

The step that matters

Strain the sauce over the egg yolks. Adding the hot sauce to egg yolks too quickly can scramble them; pouring it in gradually while stirring helps keep the sauce smooth and thick.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, milk, thyme, parsley, flour, butter, egg):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, milk, thyme, parsley, flour, butter, egg. 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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