Skip to main content
Main

Fresh Sturgeon Steak

A marinated sturgeon steak fried and served with a mustard‑egg sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

Ingredients

Directions

Marinate

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

  2. Drain and place in a bowl.

  3. Add vinegar, melted butter, salt, black pepper, and lemon juice.

  4. Let marinate for 6 hours, turning occasionally.

Coat and fry

  1. Drain and dry on a napkin.

  2. Dip in beaten egg, then roll in bread crumbs.

  3. Fry in very hot fat until cooked.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For the sauce, beat the yolks of 2 eggs with French mustard.

  2. Gradually add half of the marinate to make a smooth sauce.

  3. Serve the sauce with the fish.

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
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked through to a firm, flaky texture.
Eggs
Bind the bread crumb coating to the fish and emulsify the sauce with the marinade.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that browns in the hot fat.
Vinegar
Adds acidity to the marinade, which sharpens flavour and firms the fish surface.
Melted butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour through the marinade and helping the coating brown.
French mustard
Adds sharp flavour and helps emulsify the egg yolks into a smooth sauce.

The step that matters

Fry in very hot fat until cooked. Very hot fat sears the crumb coating quickly so it turns crisp and golden before the fish dries out. Fat that is too cool soaks into the coating and makes the fish greasy and pale.

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.

More sturgeon steak recipes

Marinade 7 See all 5 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes