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Turbot a LA Maitre D' Hotel

A turbot cooked slowly in champagne, butter, lemon, shallots, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Turbot a LA Maitre D' Hotel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the turbot

  1. Rub both sides of the turbot with coarse sea salt and let it sit for 1 hour.

  2. Wash the turbot thoroughly and place it on a well-buttered fish strainer in a kettle.

Cook

  1. Add the champagne and fresh butter to the kettle.

  2. Season the turbot with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  3. Cover the turbot with the lemon slices, shallots, and parsley.

  4. Cover the kettle and boil over high heat for 2 hours, basting the turbot frequently with its cooking liquid.

  5. Transfer the kettle to a bed of hot cinders to simmer slowly, adding fire to the cover as needed.

Finish and serve

  1. Before serving, remove the seasoning from the top and strain the cooking liquid into a saucepan with 4 ounces of butter.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  5. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Turbot
The main fish, which is cooked gently in steam and liquid so its flesh stays moist and tender.
Champagne
Adds acidity and aroma to the cooking liquid, which is later strained into the sauce.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and giving the cooking liquid a silky body.
Lemons
Add acidity and bright citrus aroma that flavour the fish and the cooking liquid.
Shallots
Add a mild, sweet aromatic onion flavour to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Basting during the 2-hour boil. Frequent basting keeps the exposed surface of the fish moist and carries heat and flavour over it, helping prevent the flesh from drying out during the long cook.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turbot, champagne, butter, pepper, lemon, shallot, parsley):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turbot, champagne, butter, pepper, lemon, shallot, parsley. 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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