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Turbot with Cream, ‘au Gratin’

A baked turbot fillet topped with béchamel sauce, mushrooms, breadcrumbs, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Turbot with Cream, ‘au Gratin’

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Poach the turbot

  1. Boil the half turbot in salted water until cooked.

  2. Drain, remove the black skin and bones, and cut the flesh into medium-sized pieces.

Assemble and bake

  1. Layer the pieces in a deep dish, sprinkling each layer with cooked and chopped mushrooms.

  2. Mask the layers with béchamel sauce and shape into a dome.

  3. Sprinkle with bread crumbs, baste with melted butter, and bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 10-12 minutes.

  4. Serve on another dish.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Mushroom + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

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

  5. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sauce and butter 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
Provides the flaky white flesh that forms the body of the dish.
Mushrooms
Add moisture and savory, earthy flavor between the layers of fish.
Béchamel sauce
Coats the layers with a creamy sauce that keeps the fish moist while baking.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden crust through browning in the oven.
Melted butter
Adds fat that helps the crumbs brown evenly and gives richness.

The step that matters

Baking the dome. Baking only 10-12 minutes is enough to brown the crumbs and heat the fish through, so watching the surface matters. Overbaking can dry the delicate turbot flesh, while underbaking leaves the sauce cold in 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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