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Baked Sturgeon

Baked sturgeon seasoned with salt, bread crumbs, pork, herbs, butter, and served with butter, caper sauce, and ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and ketchup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Baked Sturgeon

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Skin the sturgeon and soak it in salt water for 30 minutes.

  2. Parboil the fish to remove the oil.

Make the dressing and stuff the fish

  1. Mix bread crumbs, fat salt pork, sweet herbs, and butter to make a dressing.

  2. Gash the upper part of the fish deeply and rub the dressing into the cuts.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the fish in a baking pan with a little water to prevent burning.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1 hour.

  3. Serve with drawn butter mixed with caper sauce and ketchup.

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. Sauce + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Sturgeon + saucetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together93 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Bread + porktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,371 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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, cooked through by baking.
Bread crumbs
Absorb butter and fat from the pork to form a moist, binding dressing.
Fat salt pork
Adds fat that keeps the dressing and fish moist during baking.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the dressing and helps it brown.

The step that matters

Place the fish in a baking pan with a little water. The small amount of water in the pan helps prevent the fish and fat from scorching during the long bake, while the fish cooks gently in the oven.

“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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