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Turbot a LA Hollandaise

A turbot cooked in milk, water, butter, salt, and lemon, served with Hollandaise sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Turbot a LA Hollandaise

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the turbot

  1. Place the turbot in a kettle with milk, water, butter, salt, and lemon juice.

  2. Rub the lemon over the turbot.

  3. Cover the kettle with paper and simmer gently until the fish is cooked through.

  4. Remove the turbot from the kettle and drain the liquid.

Serve

  1. Transfer the turbot to a serving dish without a fish plate and pour sauce Hollandaise over it.

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

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

  2. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  5. Turbot + milktop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together79 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
Firm white fish flesh that becomes flaky and tender when gently poached.
Milk
Adds richness and a mild, creamy flavour to the poaching liquid.
Butter
Adds fat, richness and flavour to the poaching liquid.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the fish.

The step that matters

Simmer gently, do not boil. Boiling makes the fish proteins tighten and toughen, and it can break the flesh apart. A gentle simmer cooks the turbot evenly and keeps it moist and tender.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turbot, milk, butter):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turbot, milk, butter. 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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