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Boiled Turbot

A whole turbot boiled in salted water, served with parsley, nasturtium flowers, and melted butter or shrimp sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Boiled Turbot

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the turbot in cold water with salt for 2 hours to remove slime.

  2. Optionally, rub the fish with lemon to enhance whiteness.

Cook

  1. Place the turbot in a clean fish kettle with plenty of cold water and salt.

  2. Bring the water to a gentle boil, then skim off any foam.

  3. Reduce heat and let the fish simmer gently for 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve the turbot on a hot napkin with the white side up, garnished with parsley and nasturtium flowers, alongside melted butter or shrimp sauce.

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. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Turbot + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together372 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  5. Turbot + parsleytop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together264 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
The main protein; gentle simmering keeps its flesh moist and flaky rather than tough.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the fish and, in the soaking water, helps draw out surface slime.
Lemon
Its acidity is rubbed on the fish to help keep the flesh looking white.
Melted butter
Adds richness and fat that complements the mild, lean flesh of the fish.

The step that matters

Simmer gently, do not boil hard. A vigorous boil agitates and breaks up delicate fish flesh and toughens proteins, so the water should only hold a gentle simmer while the fish cooks through.

“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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