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Stewed Sturgeons

A stew of sliced sturgeon cooked in broth with vinegar, flour, butter or cream, Harvey's sauce, wine, capers, and lemon garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Capers and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,222 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Stewed Sturgeons

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Dip the sturgeon slices in vinegar and dry them well.

  2. Coat the slices in flour and broil them.

Stew and finish

  1. Place the broiled slices in a stewpan with good broth.

  2. Stew gently until perfectly tender.

  3. Thicken the gravy with butter or cream.

  4. Add Harvey's sauce and wine, then serve with capers and lemon slices on top.

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. Capers + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,222 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Flour + caperstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,024 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sauce + caperstop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together678 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Vinegar + winetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,493 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

Flour and butter 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 dish and becomes tender through gentle stewing.
Flour
Coats the slices so they brown under the broiler and help thicken the sauce.
Butter or cream
Adds richness and body to the gravy, giving it a smooth texture.
Wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the gravy.

The step that matters

Stew gently until perfectly tender. Sturgeon toughens and dries if it boils hard, so a gentle simmer lets the connective tissue soften while the flesh stays moist and flaky.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sturgeon, vinegar, flour, butter, sauce, wine, capers):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Plumfits less well
  4. Raisinfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sturgeon, vinegar, flour, butter, sauce, wine, capers. 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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