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To Stew Sturgeon

A stew of sliced sturgeon cooked in veal broth, onion, sweet herbs, and a white wine butter sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and white wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,083 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

To Stew Sturgeon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Cut sturgeon into 1‑inch thick slices.

  2. Half‑fry the slices in butter.

  3. Place them in a stew‑pan with veal broth, onion, and sweet herbs.

  4. Let them stew until perfectly tender.

Make the sauce

  1. Fry an onion in the butter used for frying the fish.

  2. Pour the fried onion and the stewing gravy into a saucepan.

  3. Add 1 to 2 glasses of white wine, butter rolled in flour, and a little ketchup.

  4. Boil the mixture.

  5. Strain the mixture.

Serve

  1. Pour the strained sauce over the fish.

  2. Garnish with slices of lemon.

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 + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. White wine + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Onion + white winetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,535 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Sturgeon
Forms the main body of the stew, firm enough to hold its shape while stewing.
Butter
Adds richness and browns the fish and onion during the initial frying.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when rolled into butter and added to the boiling liquid.
White wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the sauce.
Veal broth
Provides the savoury liquid that cooks the fish and forms the base of the gravy.

The step that matters

Let them stew until perfectly tender. Sturgeon must simmer gently until the flesh is just tender; boiling hard can toughen and break the pieces apart.

“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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