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To Boil a Turbot

A boiled turbot served with lobster sauce and melted butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

To Boil a Turbot

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Clean the inside of the turbot thoroughly and rub a little coarse sea salt on the outside to remove slime.

  2. Change the water several times until the fish is clean.

  3. Make a deep incision in the thickest part of the back on the dark side of the fish.

Poach

  1. In a large fish kettle, dissolve 4 ounces of salt in enough cold spring water to cover the fish.

  2. Place the turbot, white side up, in the kettle and bring the water to a slow boil, skimming off any scum.

  3. Let the water simmer gently until the fish is cooked through.

  4. Carefully lift the fish out, drain it, and transfer it to a hot serving dish.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately with rich lobster sauce and melted 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. Turbot + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together248 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  3. Lobster + saucetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Lobster + buttertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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
Is the main fish, cooked whole so its firm white flesh becomes moist and flaky.
Melted butter
Adds richness and fat that complements the mild, delicate flesh of the fish.
Rich lobster sauce
Adds creamy richness and a savoury, shellfish aroma to the mild fish.

The step that matters

Simmer gently, do not boil hard. A slow simmer cooks the fish evenly and keeps the delicate flesh tender and intact. Vigorous boiling toughens the proteins and can break the fish apart.

“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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