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To Bake Pike

A stuffed pike baked with bread, anchovies, oysters, suet, cream, and spices.

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 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the stuffing

  1. Open the pike near the throat and prepare the stuffing by mixing grated bread, anchovies, herbs, salt, suet, oysters, mace, pepper, egg yolks, and cream over low heat until thick.

Bake and serve

  1. Stuff the mixture into the pike and sew it up carefully.

  2. Place small bits of butter over the fish and bake it in the oven.

  3. Serve with gravy, butter, and 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
The main fish, which the stuffing fills and the oven cooks through.
Egg yolks
Bind the stuffing and set when heated, giving it a thick, cohesive texture.
Grated bread
Absorbs liquid and gives the stuffing body.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the stuffing moist and rich as it cooks.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, thickening the stuffing with the yolks over heat.
Anchovies
Contribute savory depth and saltiness that melts into the stuffing.

The step that matters

Thickening the stuffing over low heat. Egg yolks scramble if heated too fast, turning grainy. Gentle low heat lets them thicken the cream smoothly, so the stuffing holds together when stuffed into the fish.

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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