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Pike on a Plate a Delicious Dish

Pike cooked with butter, shallots, anchovies, fine herbs, bay leaves, cloves, peppercorns, salt, white wine, lemon slices, capers, hot water, and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 398 recipes mention both. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk, wheat, fish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Cook the pike

  1. Place the pike pieces on a pewter or silver plate over a chafing dish filled with burning charcoal.

  2. Add butter, shallots, anchovies, fine herbs, bay leaves, cloves, and peppercorns on top of the pike and season with salt.

  3. Cover the plate and cook for 15 minutes.

  4. Turn the pike pieces over.

  5. Add more butter, white wine, and lemon slices. Cover the plate and cook for another 15 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Add capers, hot water, and breadcrumbs.

  2. Allow to boil twice.

  3. Serve in the same plate.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Shallot + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together398 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Butter + white winetop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together5,039 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. White wine + lemontop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together3,764 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  4. Shallot + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together2,484 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Shallot + white winetop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together834 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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, cooking gently into tender flakes over the charcoal heat.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, helping the fish stay tender while it cooks.
Shallots
Add a mild, sweet onion aroma that builds the flavour base of the sauce.
Anchovies
Dissolve into the buttery juices, adding savoury depth and saltiness without tasting fishy.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma, lifting the flavour of the fish and the pan juices.
Capers
Contribute a sharp, briny acidity that cuts through the richness of the butter.

The step that matters

Turning the pike pieces over. Turning the pieces lets both sides cook evenly under the covered plate. Handle them gently so the delicate flesh stays in whole pieces and does not break apart.

Flavor stand-ins for the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, shallot, white wine, lemon, capers):

  1. Tarragonbetter flavor fit
  2. Parsleybetter flavor fit
  3. Thymebetter flavor fit
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, shallot, white wine, lemon, capers. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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