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Pike, Stewed

A stewed pike dish with butter, shallot, onion, parsley, cloves, claret, vinegar, capers, and a thickened sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Pike, Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sauce

  1. Cut the pike into slices ¾ inch thick.

  2. Melt the butter in a stewpan over medium heat.

  3. Add the shallot, onion, parsley, cloves, pepper, and salt; sauté for 5-6 minutes.

  4. Pour in the stock or water, claret, and vinegar.

Cook the fish

  1. Add the fish, cover, and simmer until cooked through.

  2. Transfer the fish to a hot dish.

Finish and serve

  1. Thicken the sauce with flour and butter, then stir in the capers.

  2. Boil the sauce for 1 minute and pour it over the fish.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

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.

  1. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Shallot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Pike
Is the main protein, becoming flaky and tender as it cooks in the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and carries the shallot and onion flavour as they cook.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the fish instead of running off.
Claret
Adds wine acidity and depth of flavour to the cooking liquid.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness.

The step that matters

Simmering the fish until cooked through. Pike is lean and delicate, so it can turn dry and fall apart if it simmers too hard or too long. A gentle simmer cooks it evenly while keeping the flesh moist and intact.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, shallot, parsley, clove, pepper, vinegar, flour):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Kalefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, shallot, parsley, clove, pepper, vinegar, flour. 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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