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To Bake Pike

A whole pike baked after cleaning, stuffing with forcemeat or salt mixture, and served with butter, lemon, or anchovy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Anchovy and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,057 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. 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. Pour warm water over the fish.

  2. Wipe it clean with a coarse cloth, moving from head to tail to avoid disturbing the scales.

  3. Wash the fish well in cold water.

  4. Empty the fish. Clean the inside thoroughly.

  5. Fill the fish with forcemeat or a mixture of salt, cayenne, and butter.

  6. Sew the fish up and fasten the tail to the mouth.

Bake and serve

  1. Dredge the outside lightly with flour.

  2. Dot with small bits of butter.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for 30 to 45 minutes for moderate-sized pike, or 1 hour for large pike.

  4. If needed, serve with melted butter and lemon 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.

  1. Anchovy + saucetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Pike
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking through in the oven to become flaky and moist.
Forcemeat
Fills the cavity, adding richness and moisture so the lean fish stays tender while baking.
Flour
Light dusting on the outside helps the skin brown and gives a slightly crisp surface.
Butter
Dotted over the fish, it melts during baking to add fat, moisture and richness.

The step that matters

Clean the inside thoroughly. Any blood or dark membrane left in the cavity can taste bitter and spoil the flavour of the cooked fish, so it must be fully removed before stuffing.

“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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