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Baking Fish

A baked pike stuffed with a forcemeat of veal, bacon, fish spawn, and herbs, served with a caper and lemon sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,062 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Baking Fish

Oven, in the book's wordsA gentle oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Gut the pike without cutting it open and clean it well.

  2. Cut a notch down the back from head to tail, turn it around, and fasten the tail in the mouth.

Make and fill the forcemeat

  1. Prepare the forcemeat by mixing the veal udder or lamb kidney, diced bacon, fish spawn, green onions, mushrooms or truffles, parsley, salt, nutmeg, and pepper.

  2. Add a bit of butter and the soaked French roll crumb, pound together with 3-4 eggs, and season to taste.

  3. Fill the belly of the fish with the forcemeat, close the cut, and smooth it out.

Bake and serve

  1. Beat 2-3 eggs and coat the fish with it, then sprinkle with bread crumbs.

  2. Bake in a gentle oven, adjusting time based on fish size.

  3. For the sauce, combine gravy, capers, chopped parsley, lemon juice, and minced shallot in a bowl and serve hot with the fish.

  4. Garnish with fried parsley.

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 + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  2. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Mushroom + parsleytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,132 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the forcemeat and form a coating that holds the bread crumbs on the fish.
French roll crumb
Soaked in cream or milk, it adds moisture and a soft texture to the forcemeat.
Veal udder or lamb kidney
Provides the rich, meaty body of the forcemeat filling.
Bacon
Adds fat and savory flavor that keeps the forcemeat moist during baking.
Capers
Add sharp, salty acidity that cuts the richness of the gravy sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the rich gravy.

The step that matters

Baking in a gentle oven. Pike is lean and its flesh dries out and toughens at high heat. A gentle oven, with time adjusted to fish size, lets the filling set and the fish cook through while staying moist.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, ketchup, veal, fish, onion, mushroom, parsley):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, ketchup, veal, fish, onion, mushroom, 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.

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