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To Roast a Sturgeon

A roasted sturgeon served with a sauce made from water, anchovy, lemon peel, onion, herbs, spices, oysters, walnut ketchup, crab, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 23 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

To Roast a Sturgeon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Soak the sturgeon in salt and water for 6-8 hours.

  2. Clean and scrape the sturgeon thoroughly.

Roast the sturgeon

  1. Fix the sturgeon on a spit and baste with butter while roasting.

  2. Dredge occasionally with flour.

  3. When half done, mix fine grated bread, sweet herbs, and chopped parsley with a little butter and sprinkle over the fish.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For the sauce, boil water, anchovy, lemon peel, onion, sweet herbs, mace, cloves, whole pepper, and horseradish for 15 minutes.

  2. Strain the mixture and return it to the saucepan with white wine, oysters and their liquor, walnut ketchup, bruised crab, and butter rolled in flour.

  3. Let the sauce simmer, then dish the fish and pour the sauce over it.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

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

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

  4. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

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 cooked and served, giving the dish its body.
Butter
Bastes the fish during roasting and enriches the sauce, adding richness and browning.
Flour
Dredged over the fish and used to thicken the sauce through the rolled butter.
White wine
Adds acidity and body to the sauce, balancing its richness.
Oysters
Add briny flavour and body to the sauce.

The step that matters

Let the sauce simmer. Simmering gently lets the butter and flour mixture thicken the sauce smoothly without lumps. Boiling hard can break the butter and make the sauce grainy, and the oysters can toughen if overcooked.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sturgeon, butter, flour, bread, parsley, anchovy, lemon. 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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