Skip to main content
Main

To Bake Pike

A stuffed pike baked with a bread and herb filling, served with a gravy and anchovy butter sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 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, anchovies, 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. Dot the top with small bits of butter.

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

  3. Serve with a sauce made from gravy, butter, and anchovy essence with a squeeze of lemon.

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. Oyster + anchovytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together603 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

  5. Egg + anchovytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,330 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Pike
The main fish, which the stuffing fills and which cooks through in the oven.
Egg yolks
Thicken the stuffing as they set with gentle heat, holding it together.
Grated bread
Soaks up cream and binds with the filling so it holds its shape.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the stuffing moist and rich as it cooks.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, helping the stuffing thicken into a soft mass.
Anchovies
Add savoury depth to the stuffing and the sauce.

The step that matters

Thickening the stuffing over heat. Egg yolks set when heated, but if the mixture gets too hot or is stirred too long it can curdle or turn grainy. Stop heating once it has just thickened so the stuffing stays smooth and holds together when stuffed into the fish.

Swap the mace

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

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

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

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes