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Boiled Turbot

A boiled turbot seasoned with salt, served with parsley, nasturtium flowers, and melted butter or shrimp sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 28,563 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Boiled Turbot

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the turbot in cold water with salt for 2 hours to remove slime.

  2. Place the turbot in a clean fish kettle with plenty of cold water and salt.

Cook

  1. Bring the water gradually to a boil.

  2. Skim the surface and let it simmer gently for 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Transfer the turbot to a hot napkin with the white side up.

  2. Garnish with parsley and nasturtium flowers.

  3. Serve with melted butter or shrimp sauce.

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. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  3. Turbot + parsleytop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together264 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
The main fish; its firm, delicate flesh holds its shape and turns opaque when poached.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the poaching water and helps draw out surface slime during the soak.
Melted butter
Adds richness and fat that complements the mild, lean fish.

The step that matters

Bringing the water to a boil gradually. Heating the water slowly, then holding it at a gentle simmer, cooks the fish evenly and keeps the delicate flesh from breaking apart or toughening.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Thymefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against turbot, 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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