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Turbot a Veau Set

Turbot served with a lobster egg and butter sauce, finished with cream and optional caviar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Turbot and lobster work together. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 163 recipes. Both carry octanal, which smells fat, soap. The science ↓

Turbot a Veau Set

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the fish

  1. Bring a pot of water to a boil and add salt and vinegar or lemon juice.

  2. Add the turbot and cook for 45 minutes, then drain.

Make the sauce

  1. Cut the lobster flesh into small dice and reserve the eggs.

  2. Pound the lobster eggs with butter and strain through a fine sieve.

  3. Make a thick white sauce (sauce blanche) and mix in the lobster egg mixture.

  4. Add a little caviar and cream, ensuring the sauce does not boil to prevent curdling.

  5. Serve the turbot with the lobster sauce on the side.

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 + lobstertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together163 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  2. Lobster + creamtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Turbot + creamtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together127 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  5. Butter + caviartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together107 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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 as a firm, flaky white fish.
Hen lobster
Supplies sweet flesh and roe that flavour and colour the sauce.
Butter
Enriches the lobster egg mixture and gives the sauce a smooth, rich texture.
Cream
Adds richness and body, giving the sauce a silky, smooth texture.

The step that matters

Keep the sauce from boiling. Once the cream and egg mixture get hot enough to boil, the sauce can curdle or split, turning grainy and separated. Holding it just below a simmer keeps it smooth and emulsified.

“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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