Skip to main content
Main

Fillets of Turbot a LA Creme

Fillets of turbot baked with butter, stock or wine, lemon, and served with a cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Turbot and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 248 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Fillets of Turbot a LA Creme

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the fish

  1. Clean, dry, and fillet the turbot by cutting it down the center of the back.

  2. Slip the knife between the bone and the fish to raise the fillets.

  3. Divide the fillets into three or four pieces, depending on size.

Bake

  1. Place the fillets in a buttered baking dish with white stock or white wine.

  2. Squeeze lemon juice over the fillets and cover with buttered paper.

  3. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 20 minutes.

Serve

  1. Drain the fillets and arrange them on a serving dish, allowing each fillet to rest on the other.

  2. Coat with Creme Sauce and 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. Turbot + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together248 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. White wine + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  4. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Turbot
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked gently into tender flakes.
Butter
Enriches the fish and keeps the surface from sticking to the dish.
White stock or white wine
Provides moisture so the fillets steam gently rather than drying out.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the mild flavour of the fish.

The step that matters

Baking the fillets. Fish is cooked when it turns opaque and flakes easily; overbaking dries the flesh and toughens it. Keeping the fillets covered with buttered paper and moist with stock traps steam, so the flesh stays tender.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Applefits about as well
  3. Plumfits about as well
  4. Grapefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against turbot, butter, white wine, sauce. 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes