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Fresh Sturgeon Steak Marinade

A sturgeon steak marinated in vinegar, butter, and lemon juice, then breaded in egg and bread crumbs and fried or boiled, served with a mustard sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Fresh Sturgeon Steak Marinade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Soak the sturgeon slice in hot water for 5 minutes.

  2. Drain the sturgeon.

  3. In a bowl, combine vinegar, melted butter, salt, black pepper, and lemon juice.

  4. Add the sturgeon to the marinade and let it sit for 6 hours, turning occasionally.

  5. Drain and dry the sturgeon on a napkin.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip the sturgeon in beaten egg, then roll it in bread crumbs.

  2. Fry or boil the sturgeon in very hot fat.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, beat the yolks of 2 eggs.

  2. Add mustard to the beaten yolks.

  3. Gradually mix in half of the marinade until smooth.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Lemon + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sturgeon
Is the main protein, cooked through by frying or boiling after marinating.
Vinegar
Acidic marinade component that firms and flavours the surface of the fish.
Eggs
Bind the bread crumb coating to the fish and, as yolks, emulsify the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the marinade, carrying flavour and moisture.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that browns in the hot fat.
Mustard
Adds sharp flavour and helps stabilise the emulsified sauce.

The step that matters

Frying in very hot fat. If the fat is not very hot, the breaded coating absorbs oil and becomes greasy instead of crisp and golden, and the coating can fall off. Patting the fish dry before coating also helps the crumbs stick and brown.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sturgeon, vinegar, butter, pepper, lemon, egg, bread):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Cucumberfits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sturgeon, vinegar, butter, pepper, lemon, egg, bread. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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