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Baked Pike

Baked Pike is a fish stuffed with bread, suet, parsley, butter, seasonings, and eggs, then coated in bread and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Baked 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 the fish

  1. Scrape the scales off the pike and remove the gills without breaking the skin.

  2. Clean the fish and stuff it with a mixture of grated bread, minced suet, chopped parsley, butter, and seasonings pounded together with the eggs.

  3. Fasten the tail of the pike into its mouth with a skewer.

  4. Dip the fish in a beaten egg, then coat it in grated bread, repeating this process twice.

Bake and serve

  1. Baste the fish with butter and bake it in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

  2. Cover with paper once it turns a fine brown color until fully cooked.

  3. Serve with a Dutch sauce in a sauce-tureen.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Pike
The main fish, whose firm flesh holds its shape during long baking.
Grated bread
Forms a crumb coating and absorbs moisture in the stuffing, keeping the fish tender.
Eggs
Bind the stuffing together and help the bread coating adhere to the fish.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the stuffing moist and rich during baking.
Butter
Adds fat for flavor and promotes browning on the outside while baking.

The step that matters

Covering with paper once browned. The coating browns quickly in the hot oven, so paper must be placed over it in time to prevent burning while the interior finishes cooking through.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, parsley, butter, pepper, lemon, nutmeg, egg):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, parsley, butter, pepper, lemon, nutmeg, 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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