Skip to main content
Main

Sauce for Sturgeon

A savory sauce made from sturgeon skin, bone, vegetables, and stock, finished with butter, vinegar, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Sauce for Sturgeon

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock base

  1. Combine the sturgeon skin, gristly bone, carrot, onion, parsley, peppercorns, salt, garlic, and bay leaf in a saucepan.

  2. Add the butter and stir over medium heat until the butter begins to fry.

  3. Pour in 1 ladle of beef stock and the vinegar. Bring to a boil for a few minutes.

  4. Add 2 more ladles of stock. Let it simmer gently until the sturgeon pieces are thoroughly cooked.

  5. Strain the liquid through a sieve into a deep dish.

Finish the sauce

  1. Reserve 1 ladleful free from fat. Boil down the reserved ladleful until it reduces to one third.

  2. Add butter sauce and a small bit of espagnole or beef glaze. Heat the sauce.

  3. Squeeze in the lemon juice. Pour it around the sturgeon.

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

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

  2. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Parsley + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sturgeon skin and gristly bone
Release gelatin and savory flavor into the stock, giving the sauce body.
Butter
Adds richness and a rounded flavor when it is heated until it begins to fry.
Beef stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and carries the flavor of the other ingredients.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances its richness.
Espagnole or beef glaze
Adds depth, body and browned meaty flavor to the reduced sauce.

The step that matters

Skimming and reducing the reserved ladleful. Fat left in the liquid makes the sauce greasy and cloudy, so the ladleful must be taken free of fat. Boiling it down concentrates flavor and thickens the sauce, so it should be reduced to one third before the other additions.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sturgeon, carrot, onion, parsley, garlic, butter, beef):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sturgeon, carrot, onion, parsley, garlic, butter, beef. 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipes