Skip to main content
Main

Fillets Op Turbot Fried in Batter

Fried fillets of turbot coated in a batter of egg, baked flour, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Fillets Op Turbot Fried in Batter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Make a batter by mixing the egg, baked flour, and milk until smooth.

Prepare the fish

  1. Cut cold turbot into fillets, each 3 inches long and 1.5 inches wide.

  2. Dip each fillet into the batter.

Fry

  1. Fry in boiling lard until pale brown.

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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Egg
Binds the batter and helps it coat the fillets evenly.
Baked flour
Thickens the batter and gives the coating its body and structure.
Milk
Adds moisture so the batter flows into a smooth, coating consistency.
Turbot (in the method)
The main fish, whose flaky flesh cooks through inside the crisp coating.

The step that matters

Fry in boiling lard until pale brown. The lard must be fully boiling so the batter sets quickly and seals the fish. If the fat is too cool, the coating soaks up grease and turns heavy, while stopping at the right colour keeps it golden rather than overcooked.

“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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes