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Plain Boiled Turbot or a L’anglaise

A simple boiled turbot seasoned with lemon and sea salt, served with lobster and Dutch sauces.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Turbot and lemon work together. They rank in the top 28% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 273 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Plain Boiled Turbot or a L’anglaise

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Wash the turbot and wipe it dry.

  2. Rub the fish with lemon juice and a little salt.

Boil

  1. Place the turbot in a kettle and cover it with spring water.

  2. Add a handful of coarse sea salt to the water.

  3. Bring the water to a simmer, then skim it thoroughly.

  4. Reduce the heat and let the turbot gently boil for about 30 minutes, depending on its size.

Serve

  1. Carefully lift the turbot out of the water and place it on a serving dish.

  2. Serve with two sauce boats filled with Lobster and Dutch sauces.

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. Turbot + lemontop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together273 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Turbot
Is the main fish, cooked whole by gentle simmering so the flesh becomes firm and flaky.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the mild flavour of the fish.

The step that matters

Reduce the heat and keep the water at a gentle boil. A hard, rolling boil agitates the fish and can break up the delicate flesh, while gentle heat cooks it evenly through to the centre.

“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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