Skip to main content
Main

Boiled Pike with Egg Sauce

A boiled fish served with a sauce of chopped hard‑boiled eggs, garnished with parsley and lemon slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Boiled Pike with Egg Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Dress the fish and tie it in a circle by putting its tail into its mouth, securing it with a trussing needle.

Poach the fish

  1. In a pot, combine water, vinegar, cloves, peppercorns, bay leaf, lemon slices, and salt.

  2. Add the fish to the cold water and bring to a boil.

  3. Cook until the fins pull off easily.

  4. If desired, remove the skin from the fish.

Serve

  1. Prepare the egg sauce by adding chopped hard-boiled eggs to the white sauce.

  2. Pour the egg sauce inside the circle of fish.

  3. Garnish with a sprig of parsley on one side and lemon slices on the platter.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Clove + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Fish + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,889 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Vinegar + clovetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,386 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

Fish
Forms the main body of the dish and is gently cooked through in the poaching liquid.
Vinegar
Adds a mild acidity to the poaching liquid, helping to firm the flesh.
Hard boiled eggs
Provide richness and body to the sauce, giving it a textured, creamy finish.
White sauce
Acts as the creamy base that carries the chopped eggs and coats the fish.

The step that matters

Cook until the fins pull off easily. Poaching in water that stays below a hard boil keeps the flesh tender and moist. Overcooking tightens the proteins, making the fish dry and firm.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, vinegar, lemon, egg, sauce, parsley):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, vinegar, lemon, egg, sauce, parsley. 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

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesFried FishFried Fish120 recipesFish CroquettesFish Croquettes81 recipesScalloped CodScalloped Cod69 recipes