Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓
Potted Pike
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare the fish
Remove the head, tail, and fins from the pike, then open the belly and clean it thoroughly.
Mix the butter, mace, Cayenne, nutmeg, salt, and white pepper together.
Rub the inside of the fish with the butter mixture.
Bake
Tie the fish up with packthread and bake in a dish with plenty of butter at 400°F (200°C) until cooked through.
Pot and seal
Once cooled, carefully remove all the bones from the fish.
In a mortar, beat the fish meat with the cold butter (do not use any gravy).
Fill pots with the mixture and cover with clarified butter.
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.
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Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together6,557 recipes
Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
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Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together13,015 recipes
Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
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Mace + white peppertop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,695 recipes
Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).
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Nutmeg + white peppertop 13% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together1,375 recipes
Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
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Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together12,257 recipes
Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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
- Pike
- Forms the main body of the potted dish, becoming tender and flaky when baked.
- Butter
- Adds richness and moisture, and binds the beaten fish into a smooth spread.
- Mace
- Adds a warm, aromatic flavour that complements the fish.
- Nutmeg
- Adds a warm, aromatic note that deepens the spiced flavour.
The step that matters
Bake until cooked through. Pike is lean and dries out easily, so baking in plenty of butter helps keep the flesh moist while it cooks through fully.
Swap the white pepper
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, mace, pepper, nutmeg):
- Cinnamonfits better
- Clovefits better
- Allspicefits better
- White pepperthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against butter, mace, pepper, nutmeg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
“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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