Skip to main content
Main

Sturgeon a LA Russe

A salted and stewed sturgeon served with a beef and red wine sauce and garnished with pickles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Onion and beef are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Sturgeon a LA Russe

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the cleaned sturgeon in salt water for several hours.

  2. Remove the sturgeon an hour before cooking.

  3. Rub the sturgeon with vinegar.

  4. Pour a little vinegar over the sturgeon.

Stew

  1. Place the sturgeon in a fish kettle.

  2. Cover the sturgeon with boiling water.

  3. Add salt, onions, and sweet herbs.

  4. Stew the sturgeon in wine or ale until the bones separate easily.

  5. Remove the skin from the sturgeon.

Brown and serve

  1. Flour the sturgeon.

  2. Brown the sturgeon before the fire.

  3. Baste the sturgeon with butter.

  4. Serve the sturgeon with a sauce made from beef gravy and red wine. Season the sauce with spices.

  5. Garnish the dish with pickles.

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. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  2. Beef + red winetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,017 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  3. Wine + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Wine + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Sturgeon
The main fish, whose flesh becomes tender and flaky through long gentle stewing.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the surface brown during basting.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the sauce made with beef gravy.
Beef gravy
Forms the body and savoury flavour of the sauce served with the fish.

The step that matters

Stew until the bones separate easily. Gentle simmering in wine or ale breaks down connective tissue and bones so the flesh becomes tender. Boiling hard can break the fish apart and make it tough.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sturgeon, onion, wine, butter, beef, red wine):

  1. Plumfits better
  2. Grapefits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sturgeon, onion, wine, butter, beef, red wine. 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 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipes