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Sturgeon Cutlets

Sturgeon cutlets fried in lard and served in a gravy of water, butter, brown flour, ketchup, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Sturgeon Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sturgeon

  1. Skin the tail piece of the sturgeon and remove the gristle.

  2. Cut the sturgeon into slices half an inch thick.

  3. Sprinkle the slices with pepper and coarse sea salt.

Fry and stew

  1. Dredge the slices in flour and fry them in hot lard.

  2. In a separate pan, combine 1 pint of water, 1 tablespoon of butter rubbed into brown flour, a little ketchup, and a little wine to make a gravy.

  3. Stew the fried cutlets in the gravy for a few minutes.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

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

  4. Sturgeon + ketchuptop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Sturgeon + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together237 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 cutlets, providing the meaty texture that the dish is built around.
Flour
Coats the slices so they brown and form a crisp crust when fried in lard.
Butter
Rubbed into brown flour to enrich the gravy and add a rich, nutty flavour.
Brown flour
Toasted or browned flour thickens the gravy and gives it a deeper colour and flavour.

“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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