Sturgeon
2 pounds of sturgeon; 1 pint of milk; 1 teaspoonful of salt; 1 tablespoonful of flour; 1 tablespoonful of butter; 1 saltspoonful of pepper. Cut the fish into small squares, put them in a stewing-pan with 2 quarts of boiling water; simmer for fifteen minutes, drain the water off. Add the butter, salt, and pepper. Moisten the flour with the milk and pour over the sturgeon, then let it come to a boil and serve.
Sturgeon may be baked, broiled, or panned, but it always must be parboiled first.
A plain milk stew that leans on the book's blanket rule for sturgeon: parboil it first. The rule made sense for large wild fish and needs adjusting for the farmed sturgeon sold today.
- Sourcing the fishWild sturgeon are protected in most waters and are generally not legally sold; the sturgeon in fishmongers' cases is farmed, usually white sturgeon from California or Europe. Farmed fillets may differ in flavour from the wild river fish this recipe assumes.
- The parboilThe parboil was probably aimed at drawing off oil and any muddy river flavour from dense wild flesh. Farmed sturgeon does not need it, and two pounds of small cubes held at a simmer that long will turn dry and cottony. If you want the leaching effect, a one- to two-minute blanch is plenty.
- SaltspoonfulA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon. A teaspoon of salt for two pounds of fish plus a pint of milk is on the low side by current taste; season the sauce at the end.
- ThickeningMoistening a tablespoon of flour with a pint of cold milk and pouring it over the fish gives a raw-flour taste and a very thin sauce. Cooking the butter and flour together for a minute, then whisking in the milk off the heat, gives the same ingredients a cleaner flavour and better body.
- Bring to a boilOnce the milk goes in, keep it just below a boil. A hard boil in a milk sauce with fish in it breaks the sauce and shreds the cubes.
- Skin and cartilageSturgeon's skeleton is largely cartilage rather than bone, and it has tough skin and a cartilaginous notochord line. Remove the skin before cubing; the cartilage softens with cooking but is better trimmed out.
- YieldTwo pounds of fish in a pint of sauce serves four generously, five at a stretch, with rice, boiled potatoes or toast.