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Turbot a lEau Sel

A turbot cooked in salted water with a lobster and anchovy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 lEau Sel

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the turbot

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

  2. Add the turbot and cook for no more than 45 minutes.

  3. Drain the turbot and serve it with the sauce separately.

Make the sauce

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

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

  3. Make a thick white sauce and mix in the lobster eggs, beurre d'anchois, and a little cream.

  4. Ensure the sauce does not boil to prevent curdling.

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
Is the main fish, cooked gently in salted acidulated water until just done.
Lobster eggs
Give the sauce its colour and a rich, briny flavour from the roe.
Butter
Adds richness and helps smooth the pounded roe into the sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the white sauce.
Beurre d'anchois
Adds a salty, savoury depth that sharpens the lobster flavour.

The step that matters

Keep the sauce below a boil. Boiling a sauce containing egg-based or roe-enriched thickening can curdle it and make it grainy. Gentle heat keeps the emulsion smooth.

“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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