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To Bake Pike

A baked pike stuffed with bread, herbs, anchovies, oysters, suet, and cream, topped with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

To Bake Pike

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Scale the pike and open it near the throat.

Make the stuffing

  1. Mix grated bread, herbs, anchovies, oysters, suet, salt, pepper, mace, and cream in a pan over heat until thickened.

  2. Stuff the mixture into the pike and sew it up.

Bake and serve

  1. Dot the top with small pieces of butter.

  2. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until cooked through.

  3. Serve with a sauce made of gravy, butter, and anchovy.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  4. Bread + oystertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,545 recipes

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

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 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

Grated bread
Absorbs the cream and juices, giving the stuffing body and a soft, moist texture.
Suet
Adds fat that melts during baking, keeping the stuffing moist and rich.
4 egg yolks
Not in the method; omitted.
Oysters
Contributes savoury, briny flavour to the stuffing.
Anchovies
Adds deep savoury, salty flavour that carries through the stuffing and sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, browning the top as it bakes.

The step that matters

Thickening the stuffing mixture. If the bread, cream and suet are not cooked together until thickened, the stuffing stays loose and may weep or collapse when the fish is stuffed and baked. Heating lets the bread absorb the liquid and sets the mixture to hold its shape.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, oyster, pepper, cream, egg, butter. 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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