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Sturgeon a LA Cardinal

Boiled sturgeon served with whiting quenelles and cardinal sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

Sturgeon a LA Cardinal

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and skin the sturgeon, then tie it with string.

Poach

  1. In a saucepan, combine the fish with carrot, onion, bay leaf, thyme, parsley, cloves, salt, mace, and vinegar.

  2. Cover the fish with water and boil gently until cooked.

  3. Make quenelles from whiting forcemeat and poach them.

Serve

  1. Drain the fish and place it on a hot dish.

  2. Garnish with the quenelles and cover with cardinal sauce before serving.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Sturgeon
Provides the main firm, flaky fish body that the whole dish is built around.
Whiting forcemeat
Forms light, tender quenelles that set when poached and give a delicate texture.
Vinegar
Adds a mild acidity to the poaching liquid, which helps firm the fish's surface.

The step that matters

Boil gently until cooked. A gentle simmer cooks the fish evenly and keeps its flesh moist and intact. A hard boil can toughen the protein and break the fish apart.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sturgeon, carrot, onion, thyme, parsley, clove, vinegar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sturgeon, carrot, onion, thyme, parsley, clove, vinegar. 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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