Why it works: Vinegar and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,844 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓
Boiled Pike with Caper Sauce
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the fish
Clean the pike by removing the intestines from a small cut near the gills.
Fasten the head and tail of the fish together to form a circle.
Place the fish on a drainer in a fish kettle or tie it in a cloth for boiling.
Boil and serve
Cover the fish with cold water and add ½ cup of coarse sea salt and ½ cup of vinegar.
Boil gently until a fin can be easily pulled out.
Dish the fish carefully without breaking it and serve with caper sauce.
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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Vinegar + saucetop 26% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together3,844 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
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, cooked whole so its flesh holds together.
- Vinegar
- Adds acidity to the cooking water, helping to firm the flesh and brighten the flavour.
The step that matters
Boil gently until a fin can be easily pulled out. Boiling vigorously can break the delicate flesh apart and cause it to flake. A gentle simmer cooks the fish evenly and keeps it intact, so the fin test shows when it is done.
“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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