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Turbot Au Gratin

A baked turbot dish topped with béchamel, breadcrumbs, and 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 ↓

Turbot Au Gratin

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Remove bones and skin from the turbot and cut the flesh into small pieces.

  3. Place the turbot pieces in a fire-proof baking dish.

Assemble

  1. Add a little béchamel sauce and seasoning to the turbot.

  2. Cover the mixture with finely grated breadcrumbs.

  3. Dot the top with small pieces of butter.

Bake

  1. Bake in the oven until browned, about 30 minutes.

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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
Provides the flaked fish base that forms the body of the gratin.
Béchamel or white sauce
Adds moisture and a creamy texture that keeps the fish from drying out.
Breadcrumbs
Form a crisp, golden top layer when baked.
Butter
Adds fat that helps the topping brown and gives richness.

The step that matters

Bake in the oven until browned. The topping needs enough heat to brown properly. Breadcrumbs and butter brown through dry heat, while the sauce underneath heats gently and keeps the fish moist. Pulling the dish out too early leaves the top pale and the filling underheated.

“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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