Skip to main content
Main

Turbot

A boiled turbot served with a herb and wine sauce, garnished with fried oysters or gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Wash and cleanse the fish thoroughly.

  2. Rub alegar over the fish for firmness.

  3. Place the fish belly upwards on a plate.

  4. Cover the fish tightly with a cloth.

Boil the fish

  1. Boil in hard water with plenty of salt and vinegar. Skim the surface to prevent discoloration.

  2. Add the fish only when the water is boiling.

  3. Carefully remove the fish from the water. Drain the fish.

  4. Remove the cloth from the fish.

  5. Transfer the fish to a serving dish cautiously.

Serve with garnishes

  1. Garnish with oyster-patties or fried oysters.

  2. Serve with lobster or gravy sauce.

  3. Serve with crisped parsley.

  4. Serve with pickles.

Make the herb-wine method

  1. In a stewpan, layer thyme, parsley, sweet herbs, and sliced onion. Place the fish on top of the herbs. Sprinkle the fish with the same herbs, chives, and sweet basil.

  2. Cover with white wine and vinegar. Add bay salt and whole pepper.

  3. Cook over gentle heat. Gradually increase the heat until done. Let the fish sit in the liquid.

  4. Melt butter in a saucepan. Add anchovies, capers, chives, pepper, salt, nutmeg, flour, vinegar, and water. Shake until combined.

  5. Pour some sauce over the fish. Serve.

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 + basiltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  3. Parsley + basiltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,351 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Parsley + chivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + chivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,907 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat, giving it a rich, smooth body.
Capers
Adds a sharp, briny acidity that cuts through the rich butter sauce.
Anchovies
Dissolve into the sauce, adding savoury depth and saltiness.
Flour
Thickens the butter sauce so it clings to the fish.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the cooking liquid that gently flavours the fish.
Vinegar
Firms the fish's surface and adds acidity to the poaching water and sauce.

The step that matters

Gradually increase the heat until done. Raising heat slowly keeps the delicate fish from toughening and breaking apart, so it cooks evenly through without drying at the edges.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turbot, vinegar, thyme, parsley, chive, basil, white wine):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against turbot, vinegar, thyme, parsley, chive, basil, white wine. 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.

More turbot recipes

Boiled 114Baked 24au Gratin 17Broiled 9Salmon 8Fish 8 See all 17 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes