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Baking Pike

A whole pike stuffed with bread crumbs, eggs, herbs, and suet or butter, then baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Baking 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. Clean and dry the pike thoroughly before stuffing.

  2. In a bowl, combine enough bread crumbs to fill the fish without overcrowding. Add 2-3 eggs to the crumbs, ensuring they are moistened evenly.

Make the stuffing

  1. Mix in thyme, marjoram, mace, salt, and pepper.

  2. Incorporate suet or butter into the mixture to retain moisture.

Bake

  1. Stuff the pike with the mixture and bake at 350°F (175°C) until cooked through.

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. Thyme + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Marjoram + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Bread + anchovytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,260 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

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, which cooks through around the stuffing.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and bulk out the stuffing so it fills the fish.
Eggs
Bind the crumbs together so the stuffing holds its shape when baked.
Suet or butter
Adds fat that keeps the stuffing moist during baking.

The step that matters

Stuff without overcrowding. Packing the crumbs too tightly leaves no room for them to moisten and set evenly, and the stuffing can turn dense or heavy. Moistening the crumbs fully with egg before stuffing helps the mixture bind and cook through evenly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, egg, thyme, marjoram, pepper, butter, anchovy):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Winter savoryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, egg, thyme, marjoram, pepper, butter, anchovy. 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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