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Boiled Turbot with Caper Sauce

A boiled turbot served with a butter and caper sauce, garnished with lemon wedges.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Capers and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,222 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Boiled Turbot with Caper Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Poach the fish

  1. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil.

  2. Add the turbot and cook for about 15-20 minutes until the fish is cooked through.

Make the caper sauce and serve

  1. In a small saucepan, melt the butter and add the capers.

  2. Serve the turbot with the caper sauce drizzled on top and lemon wedges on the side.

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. Capers + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,222 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turbot + caperstop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together47 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  3. Capers + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,637 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  5. Turbot + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together372 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

What each ingredient does

Turbot
Is the main protein, cooked through in simmering water to become flaky and tender.
Butter
Melts to form the fat base of the sauce, carrying flavour and giving it a smooth, rich texture.
Capers
Add a briny, acidic bite that cuts through the richness of the melted butter.

The step that matters

Cooking the turbot through. Fish that is overcooked turns dry and fibrous because its proteins tighten and squeeze out moisture. Checking for flakiness at the low end of the time range helps keep it moist.

“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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