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To Bake Pike

A whole pike stuffed with bread, herbs, oysters, suet, cream, and egg yolks, baked and served with a broth‑anchovy‑lemon sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. 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 the fish

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

Make the stuffing

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

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

Bake and serve

  1. Place small bits of butter on top of the fish.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until cooked through.

  3. For sauce, combine the broth, essence of anchovy, and lemon juice in a pan and boil together.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Anchovy + oystertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together603 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Anchovy + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,260 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

  4. Anchovy + eggtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,330 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Bind the stuffing and help it set as it thickens.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness to the stuffing.
Grated bread
Gives the stuffing body and soaks up liquid.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the stuffing moist and tender.
Rich broth
Forms the base of the sauce, adding savory depth.

The step that matters

Thickening the stuffing. Egg yolks set when heated gently, but too much heat can scramble them. Stirring over moderate heat until just thickened gives a smooth, cohesive stuffing.

Swap the mace

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

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

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