Skip to main content
Main

Baked Sturgeon

A baked sturgeon seasoned with a bread crumb and pork dressing, served with butter, caper sauce, and catsup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. 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. Skin the sturgeon and soak it in salt water for 30 minutes.

  2. Parboil the fish to remove excess oil.

  3. Make a dressing with bread crumbs, fat salt pork, sweet herbs, and butter.

  4. 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 400°F (200°C) for 1 hour.

  3. Serve with a sauce made of drawn butter, caper sauce, and catsup.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

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

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

  5. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce 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

Sturgeon
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked whole in the oven until flaky.
Bread crumbs
Absorb fat and juices in the dressing, giving the cuts a moist, tender stuffing.
Salt pork
Adds fat that bastes the fish and carries savoury flavour into the dressing.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the dressing and forms the base of the drawn butter sauce.

The step that matters

Parboil the fish to remove excess oil. Parboiling firms the flesh and draws out surface oil, so the fish bakes cleanly and the dressing does not turn greasy. Boiling too long, however, can dry and break up the flesh.

“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

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipes