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Turbot K LA Sauce Blanche

A sauce of butter, flour, anchovy, capers, salt, and pepper served over boiled turbot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,024 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Turbot K LA Sauce Blanche

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Stir in the flour, salt, and pepper until combined.

  3. Add the minced anchovy and capers, stirring until the sauce thickens.

Serve

  1. Serve the sauce over boiled turbot.

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. Flour + caperstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,024 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Anchovy + caperstop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together473 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + caperstop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,088 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Melts to form the fat base that the flour is cooked into.
Flour
Thickens the butter and gives the sauce its body as it cooks.
Anchovy
Adds a salty, savoury depth to the sauce.
Capers
Add a sharp, briny acidity that cuts through the rich butter.

The step that matters

Stirring in the anchovy and capers until the sauce thickens. Once the flour is cooked into the butter it begins to thicken, and the sauce can become lumpy or scorch if left unattended over heat. Constant stirring keeps it smooth and even.

Swap the capers

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, pepper, anchovy):

  1. Parsleyfits about as well
  2. Capersthe original
  3. Thymefits less well
  4. Nutmegfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, pepper, anchovy. 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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