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To Roast Sturgeon

A whole sturgeon roasted on a spit, basted with butter, finished with bread crumbs, served with a gravy of butter, flour, anchovy, sherry, and citrus.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread 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 ↓

To Roast Sturgeon

Ingredients

Directions

Roast

  1. Securely tie the sturgeon on a spit and roast it.

  2. Baste constantly with butter.

  3. When nearly done, dredge with bread crumbs.

  4. It is done when the flakes begin to separate, about 30 minutes over a brisk fire.

Serve

  1. Serve with gravy thickened with butter and flour, enriched with anchovy, sherry wine, and citrus juice.

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

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

  2. Sturgeon + anchovytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Bread + anchovytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,260 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Butter
Basting adds fat and moisture to the surface and helps it brown.
Bread crumbs
Dredging forms a crust that browns and adds a crisp texture.
Flour
Thickens the gravy by forming a starch-based sauce with the butter.
Anchovy
Adds savory depth to the gravy without tasting strongly of fish.
Sherry wine
Adds acidity and aromatic complexity to the gravy.

The step that matters

Judging doneness by flaking. Fish keeps cooking from residual heat, so pulling it once the flakes just begin to separate prevents it from drying out.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sturgeon, butter, bread, flour, anchovy, sherry, wine):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Applefits better
  3. Plumfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sturgeon, butter, bread, flour, anchovy, sherry, wine. 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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