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Roasted Stuffed Fike

A roasted pike stuffed with anchovy fillets, gherkins, omelet, egg yolks, bread panada, and herbs, served with piquante sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 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 ↓

Roasted Stuffed Fike

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Keep the Pike for two days after catching.

  2. Scale, draw, and lard the Pike with anchovy fillets and gherkins.

Make and stuff the filling

  1. In a mortar, combine the cooked omelet, hard-boiled egg yolks, bread panada, and butter. Pound the mixture well.

  2. Stir in enough whipped egg whites and yolks to achieve the right consistency.

  3. Stuff the Pike with this mixture.

Wrap and roast

  1. On a sheet of buttered paper, spread sweet herbs. Sprinkle with mixed spice and salt.

  2. Wrap the Pike. Secure the wrapped Pike with skewers.

  3. Roast the wrapped Pike in front of a clear fire, basting occasionally with white wine and warmed butter.

  4. Once cooked, unwrap the Pike. Place it on a hot dish. Garnish with parsley.

  5. Serve with thick piquante sauce.

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. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Whipped into the filling to lighten its texture and help it set.
Egg yolks
Enrich the filling and bind it, helping it hold together when cooked.
Bread panada
Adds moisture and body to the filling, keeping it tender rather than dry.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the filling and basting, aiding browning.
Anchovy fillets
Add a salty, savoury depth that seasons the fish from within.

The step that matters

Stuffing consistency. The filling must be firm enough to hold its shape but light enough to stay tender. Too much egg white makes it rubbery or loose, while too little leaves it dense. Adding the whipped whites gradually lets you judge the texture.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, bread, butter, white wine, sauce):

  1. Capersfits about as well
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Nutmegfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, bread, butter, white wine, sauce. 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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