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Sturgeon-soup, with Curry

A soup made from sturgeon, onions, leek, celery root, curry powder, and rice flour, finished with boiled rice and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Leek and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,093 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Sturgeon-soup, with Curry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sturgeon

  1. Remove the skin from the sturgeon and wash it.

  2. Season the sturgeon and braise it with vegetables, wine, and broth.

Make the soup

  1. In a separate pan, fry the minced onions, leek, and celery root in butter.

  2. Moisten the fried vegetables with fish broth and the cooking stock from the sturgeon.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil, then reduce heat and add a bunch of parsley and aromatics.

  4. Thicken the soup with a mixture of curry powder and rice flour diluted in cold broth.

  5. Boil the soup for 30 minutes, then skim off the fat and strain it through a sieve.

  6. Add the sturgeon meat cut into small squares and the boiled rice to the soup.

  7. Bring the soup to a simmer and thicken it with a mixture of egg yolks.

  8. Serve the soup in a tureen.

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. Leek + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,093 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + leektop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,326 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).

  3. Leek + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together161 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Celery + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice flour
Thickens the broth into a smooth, body-rich soup as its starch gelatinizes.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the soup with a silky texture when gently heated.
Butter
Carries the flavour of the fried onions, leek and celery root and adds richness.
Curry powder
Adds the warm, spiced aroma that defines the soup.
Fresh sturgeon
Supplies the firm, mild fish meat that forms the body of the soup.

The step that matters

Thickening with egg yolks. If the soup boils after the yolks go in, they scramble and turn grainy. Bring it only to a simmer, or temper the yolks first, so it stays smooth and silky.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sturgeon, onion, leek, fish, rice, egg, butter):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sturgeon, onion, leek, fish, rice, egg, butter. 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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