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To Bake Pike

A stuffed pike baked with bread, anchovies, herbs, suet, oysters, mace, pepper, egg yolks, cream, and 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 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare and stuff

  1. Open the Pike near the throat and stuff it with the mixture of grated bread, anchovies, herbs, salt, suet, oysters, mace, pepper, egg yolks, and cream.

  2. Sew the fish up securely.

Bake and serve

  1. Place bits of butter over the fish.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until cooked through.

  3. Serve with gravy, butter, and additional 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

Pike
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked through in the oven as the central protein.
Egg yolks
Bind the stuffing and set during baking, giving it a firmer, custard-like texture.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness to the stuffing, keeping it soft as it bakes.
Suet
Adds fat that melts into the stuffing, contributing moisture and a rich mouthfeel.
Grated bread
Absorbs liquid and fat, giving the stuffing body and a soft crumb.
Anchovies
Contribute savory depth and saltiness that flavours the stuffing and the serving anchovy.

The step that matters

Sew the fish up securely. If the stitching is loose, the stuffing can expand and leak during baking, and the egg and cream mixture may escape before it sets, leaving the fish dry and the filling uneven.

Swap the mace

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

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

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