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German Baked Pike Aux Sardines

A German baked pike served with sardines, butter, and fried potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,456 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

German Baked Pike Aux Sardines

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Salt the pike moderately and bend it into a circle, securing the tail in the mouth.

Stew and bake

  1. Place the pike in a buttered pan, cover it, and stew the fish.

  2. If there is little gravy, add pea-water or plain water.

  3. A quarter hour before serving, mash the sardines with butter and pour over the fish.

  4. Bake uncovered until brown, basting constantly.

Serve

  1. Serve garnished with chopped hard-boiled eggs and lightly fried potatoes.

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 + potatotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Potato + eggtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,978 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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, providing firm, flaky white flesh when cooked.
Sardines
Mashed with butter and poured over the fish, adding rich, savoury flavour and moisture.
Butter
Greases the pan, enriches the sauce, and helps the fish brown while basting.
Potatoes
Fried as a side, adding crisp browned texture to the plate.

The step that matters

Basting constantly during the bake. Frequent basting keeps the surface moist and carries fat over the fish, so it browns evenly without drying out. Stopping early leaves the flesh dry and pale.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, egg):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg. 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.

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