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Baked Sturgeon

A baked sturgeon seasoned with salt, pepper, herbs, lemon, wine, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Baked Sturgeon

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 the fish

  1. Clean the sturgeon thoroughly, skin it, and split it along the belly without separating it.

  2. Place the fish in a large baking dish.

Season and bake

  1. Sprinkle with salt, pepper, and finely minced herbs.

  2. Moisten the fish with lemon juice and white wine.

  3. Place small pieces of butter over it.

  4. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven, basting frequently until browned, about 1 hour.

  5. Serve with its own gravy.

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 + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Lemon + white winetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  4. Pepper + white winetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,433 recipes

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

  5. Sturgeon + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together237 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Sturgeon
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking into moist, flaky flesh.
Butter
Adds fat that carries flavour and helps the surface brown during baking.
White wine
Adds moisture and acidity that keeps the fish tender and builds the pan gravy.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and wine flavours.

The step that matters

Basting until browned. Fish is lean and dries out quickly in dry oven heat. Frequent basting with the butter, wine and juices keeps the flesh moist while the surface browns, so the fish does not overcook before it colours.

“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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