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To Boil Sturgeon

A boiled sturgeon served with lemon peel, peppercorns, horseradish, vinegar, and garnished with fried oysters, sliced lemon, horseradish, served with melted butter or anchovy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,155 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

To Boil Sturgeon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the sturgeon well.

Boil and serve

  1. Boil the sturgeon in enough water to just cover it.

  2. Add lemon peel, whole peppercorns, horseradish, and vinegar to the water.

  3. Once cooked, garnish with fried oysters, sliced lemon, and horseradish.

  4. Serve with melted butter or anchovy sauce.

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. Lemon + horseradishtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Sturgeon + oystertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27 recipes

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

  3. Horseradish + vinegartop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

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

  5. Horseradish + oystertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together282 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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

What each ingredient does

Sturgeon
Is the main protein that is cooked whole in the poaching liquid.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the cooking liquid a sharp, bright flavour.

“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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