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Pike, Stewed in Gravy

A pike fillet stewed with bacon, veal, butter, wine, and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,645 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Pike, Stewed in Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and steam

  1. Lard the pike thickly with bacon.

  2. Place it in a stewpan with butter and layers of veal and bacon underneath and on top.

  3. Cover the pan and steam gently for 15 minutes.

Stew and serve

  1. Pour gravy and wine over the pike and let it simmer until cooked through, about 30 to 40 minutes.

  2. Serve on a hot dish with the stewing gravy poured around it.

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. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  2. Veal + winetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together698 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  3. Butter + vealtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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 dish, becoming flaky and tender as it cooks gently in liquid.
Bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour that slowly bastes the fish and keeps it moist.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the fish brown lightly and taste fuller during steaming.
Veal
Adds meaty savouriness and gelatine that enriches the stewing liquid.
Gravy
Forms the stewing liquid that carries flavour and keeps the pike moist as it simmers.
Wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth that brightens the rich gravy.

The step that matters

Simmering until cooked through. Pike is lean and delicate, so gentle simmering keeps it moist; boiling hard can toughen and break the flesh, while undercooking leaves it unsafe and unpleasantly firm.

“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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