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To Boil Sturgeon

Boiled sturgeon served with lemon peel, horseradish, vinegar, and crab or lobster sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 ↓

To Boil Sturgeon

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Place the sturgeon in enough cold water to cover it.

  2. Add lemon peel, horseradish, whole pepper, and 1 pint of vinegar for every 2 quarts of water.

  3. Boil the sturgeon until cooked through.

  4. Garnish with sliced lemon and scraped horseradish.

  5. Serve with crab or lobster sauce, plain melted butter, and anchovy sauce.

  6. Optionally, serve with sliced cucumber.

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 + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Crab + anchovytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together79 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Crab + buttertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together812 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Sturgeon
Is the main fish that is poached in the seasoned liquid and served.
Vinegar
Adds acidity to the poaching liquid, sharpening the flavour of the fish.
Horseradish
Contributes a pungent, sharp aroma and flavour to the poaching liquid and garnish.

The step that matters

Boil the sturgeon until cooked through. Boiling too hard or too long can toughen and dry out the fish, while undercooking leaves it unsafe to eat. Keeping the liquid at a gentle simmer and checking doneness helps the flesh become tender and flaky.

Swap the horseradish

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sturgeon, lemon, pepper, vinegar, crab, butter, anchovy):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits about as well
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Horseradishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sturgeon, lemon, pepper, vinegar, crab, butter, anchovy. 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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