Skip to main content
Main

Turbot, Holibut, and Brill, Boiled

A boiled fish dish featuring turbot, holibut, or brill, garnished with smelts, lobster coral, horseradish, lemon, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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, Holibut, and Brill, Boiled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and poach

  1. Score the skin across the thick part of the back to prevent breaking.

  2. Place the fish in a kettle with cold water and a large handful of coarse sea salt.

  3. Bring to a boil, skim well, and then reduce to a simmer for 15-20 minutes. If boiling too fast, the fish will break.

Garnish and serve

  1. Garnish with smelts or gudgeons around the fish.

  2. If using lobster, pound the coral and rub it through a colander over the fish.

  3. Add horseradish, sliced lemon, and parsley as additional garnishes.

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. Turbot + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together248 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Smelt + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together103 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Turbot + smelttop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together26 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Turbot + lobstertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together163 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
Is the main fish, whose firm flesh holds together during poaching.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the poaching water so the fish is seasoned through its flesh.

The step that matters

Keep the simmer gentle. Vigorous boiling agitates the delicate flesh and makes it break apart, so the water should only simmer once it has come to a boil and been skimmed.

“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.

More boiled turbot recipes

with Lobster Sauce 4Plain 3 See all 114 →

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesLobster SauceLobster Sauce174 recipesLobster CroquettesLobster Croquettes99 recipesHorseradish SauceHorseradish Sauce17 recipes