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Sturgeon, Baked
Take a small sturgeon, skin and cleanse it, and remove the inside. Lay the fish in a large baking-dish, sprinkle a little chopped parsley over it, together with a little pepper and salt. Moisten with a tumblerful of white wine; lay some little pieces of butter here and there upon the fish, and bake in a moderate oven. Baste frequently. When it is nicely browned, serve the sturgeon on a hot dish with its own sauce poured round it. Time to bake, about an hour.
A plain wine-and-butter roast that depends almost entirely on not overcooking the fish. The main obstacles now are sourcing and the stated hour in the oven.
- Sourcing the fishEvery wild sturgeon species is protected under CITES, and wild capture is banned or tightly restricted almost everywhere. What is legally sold today is farmed sturgeon (usually white sturgeon or Siberian sturgeon), sold as steaks or fillets rather than as a whole "small sturgeon" — buy from a reputable fishmonger who can name the farm.
- "A moderate oven"Conventionally read as about 350F/180C. Victorian ranges were judged by feel, with "moderate" the middle of the range; here it suits an open dish that is basted frequently and expected to brown.
- A tumblerfulUsually reckoned at half a pint, about 10 imperial fl oz (roughly 1¼ US cups) of dry white wine. For a piece of fish rather than a whole one, half that is plenty — you want a shallow pool for basting, not a poaching liquid.
- The hour is too longSturgeon is dense and firm, and the period assumption was a whole fish of several pounds cooked through. A 1.5–2 lb piece is done in 20–30 minutes at 350F; standard food-safety guidance is 145F internal, and cooking it to the full hour will leave it dry and chalky.
- Skin and the fat lineSturgeon has no scales but a tough hide studded with bony scutes; ask the fishmonger to remove it. Trim away any grey-brown fatty layer beneath the skin, which carries most of the strong flavour.
- Basting and the sauceThe pan liquid will not thicken on its own. Strain it into a small pan when the fish comes out, reduce hard for a minute or two, and whisk in a further knob of cold butter off the heat before pouring it round.
- YieldAllow 6–8 oz of trimmed sturgeon per person. Rich, meaty flesh; a boiled potato and a green vegetable are enough alongside.
Sturgeon carried a status in Britain out of all proportion to how often anyone ate it: by long-standing prerogative it is a "royal fish," and one caught in English waters or cast ashore was claimed for the Crown, a custom generally traced to a statute of Edward II's reign. Thames and Severn sturgeon were landed often enough in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to be newsworthy, and the fish's firm, pale, close-grained flesh was habitually compared to veal — which may help explain why Victorian cookery books will treat it as a roasting joint, larded or basted with butter, though the same books also boil, stew and pickle it. Cassell's includes it much as it includes turtle and plover: a dictionary of cookery had an entry, whether or not the reader would ever meet one. Pollution and river weirs eventually reduced the European population, which persisted into the mid-twentieth century before collapsing, and the sturgeon a modern cook buys is a farmed animal raised chiefly for caviar, with the flesh as the second crop.