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Turbot

A whole turbot fried and simmered in a claret and white wine sauce with anchovy, spices, butter, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Turbot and anchovy match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 110 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Turbot

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and fry

  1. Dust the cleaned turbot with flour.

  2. Heat enough hot lard in a pan to cover the fish.

  3. Fry the turbot until golden brown, then drain the fat.

Make the sauce

  1. In the same pan, add claret and white wine to nearly cover the fish, along with the anchovy, salt, nutmeg, and ginger.

  2. Simmer the fish in the wine mixture until it reduces by half.

  3. Add the butter and minced lemon, and simmer until the sauce thickens.

Serve

  1. Rub a hot serving dish with shallot, place the turbot in it, pour over the 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 + anchovytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together110 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Nutmeg + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. White wine + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Is the main fish, cooked whole so its flesh stays moist while the skin browns.
Flour
Forms a dry coating that browns during frying and helps thicken the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness, and when rolled in flour it thickens the sauce as it melts in.
Claret wine
Provides acidity and flavour as it reduces into the sauce.
Anchovy
Adds savoury depth to the sauce, which is hard to pin to a single flavour.

The step that matters

Simmering the fish in the wine until it reduces by half. The wine must reduce enough to concentrate its flavour and thicken the sauce, but if it boils hard the delicate fish can break apart and toughen. A gentle simmer keeps the flesh tender.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turbot, flour, wine, white wine, anchovy, nutmeg, 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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