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Fillets of Sturgeon

Stewed sturgeon fillets with onions, herbs, spices, anchovies, wine, stock, and optional cream, finished with lemon, cayenne, salt, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Fillets of Sturgeon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Sauté the thick slices of sturgeon lightly.

Stew

  1. Place the fish in a stewpan with the onion, bundle of sweet herbs, small onions, mace, cloves, and whole pepper.

  2. Add the liquor from the sauté pan, anchovies, white wine, and second stock.

  3. Stew gently until the fish is tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Carefully remove the fillets and thicken the sauce.

  2. For a white sauce, add cream.

  3. Season with lemon juice, cayenne pepper, salt, and sugar.

  4. Serve the fillets as cutlets and pour the sauce over them.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. White wine + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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, cooked gently until tender.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the stewing liquid.
Anchovies
Contribute savory depth to the sauce, blending into the background.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the sauce, giving it a white colour.
Lemon juice
Brightens the sauce with acidity that balances the rich elements.

The step that matters

Stew gently until the fish is tender. Sturgeon fillets are delicate and firm up and dry out if simmered hard. Keeping the liquid at a gentle simmer cooks the protein evenly so the flesh stays moist and flakes cleanly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sturgeon, onion, clove, pepper, white wine, cream, lemon):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sturgeon, onion, clove, pepper, white wine, cream, 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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