Skip to main content
Main

Fried Pike

A fish dish where a pike or pickerel is split, seasoned, floured, and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Fried Pike

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Scale the pike or pickerel and split it open on the back.

  2. Remove the entrails and place a bunch of parsley inside each fish.

  3. Season the fish with salt and pepper.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat a frying pan until hot.

  2. Dust the fish with flour and fry them until cooked.

  3. Serve hot from the frying pan.

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

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

  2. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 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 or pickerel
The main ingredient; its flesh firms and turns flaky as it cooks.
Flour
Dusting creates a thin coating that helps the surface brown and crisp in the hot pan.
Parsley
Stuffed inside the fish, it adds a fresh, herbal aroma to the flesh.

The step that matters

Heat the frying pan until hot. A hot pan sears the floured surface quickly, forming a crust that helps the fish release from the pan instead of sticking and breaking apart.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, flour):

  1. Jalapenofits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Marjoramfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes