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Pike with Egg Sauce

A pike fillet cooked in butter with onion, celery root, parsley root, lemon, and a sauce of egg yolks, almonds, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 14,037 recipes mention both. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Pike with Egg Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Salt the fish inside and out, preferably using heated salt for better penetration.

  2. Melt the butter over medium heat in a porcelain-lined kettle.

  3. Add the chopped onion, celery root, parsley root, and lemon slices to the kettle.

  4. Place the fish in the kettle, either whole or sliced, and add enough water to just cover it.

  5. Season with additional salt and add the whole peppercorns and ground white pepper.

Cook and strain

  1. Boil the fish quickly until cooked; check doneness by pulling on the fins.

  2. Remove the fish to a large platter.

  3. Strain the cooking liquid through a sieve, discarding the lemon slices.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a bowl, combine the strained sauce with the beaten egg yolks and pounded almonds, stirring constantly.

  2. Return the mixture to the kettle and stir until it boils, then quickly pour it over the fish.

  3. Garnish with curly parsley once cooled.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together6,810 recipes

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

  3. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,467 recipes

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

  4. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together25,843 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

Pike
Is the main fish, cooked gently in the seasoned liquid until it turns opaque and flakes.
Egg yolks
Thicken the strained liquid into a smooth sauce when heated, giving it body and richness.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the cooking liquid that carries the flavours.
Almonds
Add body and a nutty flavour, helping the egg sauce become thick and creamy.

The step that matters

Boiling the egg sauce. Egg yolks thicken as they heat, but if the mixture boils too long or too hard it can scramble and turn grainy. Stir constantly and pour it over the fish as soon as it boils.

Flavor stand-ins for the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, onion, celery, parsley, lemon, fish, egg):

  1. Tarragonbetter flavor fit
  2. Thymebetter flavor fit
  3. Capersbetter flavor fit
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, celery, parsley, lemon, fish, egg. 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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