Name: To Boil Pike
Ingredients: 1 pike; ½ cup vinegar; water (enough to cover the fish); coarse sea salt (to taste); plain melted butter or anchovy sauce (for serving)

Why it works: Fish and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,488 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

To Boil Pike

Ingredients

1 pike
½ cup vinegar
water (enough to cover the fish)
coarse sea salt (to taste)
plain melted butter or anchovy sauce (for serving)

Directions

Remove the gills and clean the pike thoroughly.
Soak the fish in a mixture of ½ cup vinegar and enough water to cover it for 30 minutes to avoid a muddy taste.
Dry the inside of the fish and fill it with oyster forcemeat or veal forcemeat.
Curl the fish and fasten it with the tail in the mouth.
Place it on a fish plate and cover with cold water.
Add coarse sea salt as soon as the water boils.
Skim the surface and boil gently for 30 minutes to 1 hour, depending on the size.
Serve with plain melted butter or anchovy 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.

Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,488 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Vinegar + buttertop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,513 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).
Vinegar + fishtop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,036 recipes

Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).