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Baked Sturgeon

A baked sturgeon marinated with eschalots, bay leaf, thyme, parsley, mace, and cloves, then baked in buttered paper and glazed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Baked Sturgeon

Oven, in the book's wordsA sharp oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the sturgeon by marinating it with eschalots, bay leaf, thyme, parsley, mace, and cloves.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the marinated sturgeon in a baking dish, covering it with strong buttered paper.

  2. Baste the sturgeon two or three times while baking.

  3. Once done, glaze the sturgeon and serve it with a reduced marinade thickened with kneaded flour and butter.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Parsley + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the glaze and thickened sauce, and helps the fish brown.
Kneaded flour
Thickens the reduced marinade into a sauce for serving.
Eschalots
Add aromatic sweetness and savoury depth to the marinade.

The step that matters

Basting during baking. Basting spoons moisture and fat over the surface while the fish cooks, helping keep the flesh from drying out. Fish is lean and cooks quickly, so the surface can dry before the centre is done.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sturgeon, thyme, parsley, clove, butter, flour):

  1. Winter savoryfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sturgeon, thyme, parsley, clove, butter, flour. 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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