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STURGEON (a la Provencale)
Take a slice of sturgeon cut from the middle of the fish, lard it all over with thin strips of ham, or even of eel, and brown it by putting it in a stewpan with a large slice of butter, a spoonful of powdered sweet herbs, half a clove of garlic, and a little pepper and salt. Lay two or three bay-leaves on the top of the fish, and pour a little stock round. Cover the saucepan closely, and let the contents simmer over a gentle fire till they are done enough. Serve the fish on a hot dish, and send its own gravy, melted butter, brown sauce, anchovy sauce, or any similar sauce, to table with it. Time, according to the age and size of the fish.
A braise rather than a bake: the fish is browned in butter, then covered and cooked gently in its own juices with a little stock. The one thing the original leaves open is the point that matters most, since "till they are done enough" is far longer than a modern cook would allow.
- TimingSturgeon is dense and meaty but still fish. A thick centre-cut steak needs roughly 10 minutes per inch of thickness over a low flame; take it off when the flesh is opaque and just yields, around 130-140F, though official guidance for fish is 145F. Cooked to the old standard of falling apart it turns dry and stringy.
- Sourcing the fishWild sturgeon is protected under CITES and generally not for sale; what is on the market is farmed, usually white sturgeon or Siberian sturgeon, sold as thick boneless steaks. Farmed sturgeon is the only version to buy for this. Swordfish or a thick halibut steak behaves similarly under the same treatment.
- LardingLarding needles are no longer standard equipment. Thin strips of prosciutto or unsmoked bacon laid over and under the steak, or tucked into slits cut with a paring knife, do the same job of basting the interior. The eel may have served to add fat without a meat flavour.
- StewpanA stewpan here means a heavy lidded pan on the stovetop, not an oven dish. A wide saute pan with a tight lid works, as does a small enamelled cast-iron pot; the fish should sit in a single layer.
- Powdered sweet herbsA dried mixture, typically thyme, marjoram, parsley and savory. A rounded teaspoon of dried mixed herbs or herbes de Provence is a reasonable reading of the "spoonful", though period usage of the word is inconsistent and a larger spoon may have been meant.
- Stock quantity"A little stock round" is perhaps half a cup for a single steak, just enough to keep the pan from scorching and to make a few spoonfuls of gravy. Fish stock or a light chicken stock both work; more liquid than this poaches the fish instead of braising it.
- GarlicHalf a clove is not a misprint. Nineteenth-century English cookery used garlic as a background note, and the whole half clove can be lifted out with the bay leaves before serving if you want it fainter still.
- Yield and sauceA centre-cut steak of about 1 1/2 lb serves three or four. The pan juices are thin on their own; whisk in a knob of cold butter off the heat, or serve the anchovy sauce the recipe suggests, which suits the fish's richness better than melted butter alone.
Sturgeon was for centuries a royal fish in England, claimed by the Crown when caught in tidal waters, and its appearance in a Victorian household dictionary reflects a period when the Thames and other British rivers still yielded the occasional specimen and when imported salted and smoked sturgeon reached the market from the Baltic and North America. Cooks of the period treated it frankly as meat rather than fish, and this is why it is larded like a veal fricandeau and braised with ham, herbs and bay: the flesh is firm, low in the delicate flakiness of cod or sole, and takes to the same handling as veal. The "a la Provencale" label in books of this era is loose, signalling little more than garlic and herbs rather than any specific southern French technique. Sturgeon has since become scarce enough that most of the world's populations are protected, and the fish that reaches a modern table comes from aquaculture farms raising it chiefly for caviar.