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Sterlet
The sterlet is a much-esteemed fresh-water fish, which is found chiefly in Russian rivers. It somewhat resembles a sturgeon, although much smaller in size. It should be very fresh when it is to be cooked. There is a gristle which extends from the head to the belly and holds the roe; this should be cut or taken out before cooking, as it causes the fish to curl up, and the roe, which is highly esteemed, may be cooked separately. The fish may be cooked in the following manner. Cover the sterlet with a well-buttered paper, and place it in a fish-kettle with sufficient white wine, or cider, or champagne, to half cover it. Put on the fire to simmer gently until tender. Take it out; add a little Espagnole sauce to the liquor, and let it reduce. Garnish the fish with olives, truffles, foie gras, etc., serve the sauce in a tureen, and quarters of lemons on a separate plate. Sterlet may also be coked in white wine flavoured with cucumber rind, and dished up with sliced cucumber as a garnish; the sauce being made from the liquor in which the fish is cooked. Cost, uncertain.
A late-Victorian court-bouillon poach dressed up with the full Escoffier-era garnish. Most of the work is in the preparation of the fish; the cooking itself is gentle and quick.
- Sourcing the fishSterlet (Acipenser ruthenus) is a true sturgeon, and all sturgeon species are listed under CITES; wild-caught fish are protected across their Danube and Volga range. Farmed sterlet is raised commercially in Europe and is what any legitimate supplier will be selling. If none is available, any firm farmed sturgeon, or a thick fillet of another dense white fish, poaches the same way.
- The gristle is the notochordThe "gristle which extends from the head to the belly" is the notochord, the cartilaginous rod sturgeon have in place of a bony backbone. Pulling it out before cooking is the hinge of the recipe: left in, it contracts and bows the fish. Dried, it is the Russian ingredient vyaziga, used in coulibiac fillings.
- Fish kettle and liquidA long lidded fish kettle with a lifting trivet is what keeps a whole fish intact; a roasting tin with a rack and a foil tent does the same job. The recipe gives no size, but half-covering a fish of a few pounds takes the better part of a bottle of wine, so cider is the sensible everyday choice the book offers.
- Buttered paperBaking parchment rubbed with soft butter, cut to sit directly on the fish. It is a cartouche: it keeps the exposed upper surface moist and stops it drying while the lower half poaches.
- Heat and timing"Simmer gently" means barely trembling water — the book gives no temperature, but somewhere around 170-180F, never a rolling boil, which shreds sturgeon. Reckon on roughly 8-10 minutes per inch of thickness; the flesh should be opaque and just parting from the cartilage. Sturgeon is meaty and forgiving of a minute either way, but not of hard boiling.
- EspagnoleThe classic brown sauce, made from brown roux, brown stock and a mirepoix, simmered and skimmed for hours. A well-reduced veal or beef demi-glace from a good supplier stands in for it directly; two or three tablespoons is enough to give the reduced poaching liquor colour and body.
- The roeSterlet roe is small-grained caviar, historically prized in Russia. Cooked separately as the recipe suggests, it is simply fried or poached in butter; it is not caviar unless it has been salted and matured, which is a different process altogether.
- Yield and "cost, uncertain"A whole sterlet of a few pounds serves about four as a main course. Cassell's gives no price; the fish reached British tables only occasionally and at whatever the fishmonger could get.
The sterlet is one of the smallest of the sturgeons, a fish of the Volga, the Danube and the rivers running to the Black and Caspian seas, and in nineteenth-century Russia it was the aristocrat of the freshwater catch — the basis of the clear ukha served at grand dinners, and prized enough that live fish were carried to Moscow and St Petersburg in water tanks. Its appearance in an English dictionary of cookery says less about British fishmongers than about the reach of French restaurant cuisine, which by the later nineteenth century had absorbed Russian luxuries wholesale: the truffles, foie gras and olives piled round this poached fish are pure grand-hotel garnish, and the frank admission that the cost is "uncertain" tells you very few readers were expected ever to see one. The dried notochord, vyaziga, had its own separate career in Russian kitchens as the binding element in coulibiac.