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To Bake Pike

A baked pike stuffed with bread, anchovies, oysters, suet, herbs, and eggs, topped with butter.

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).

  2. Open the pike near the throat.

Make the stuffing

  1. In a pan, mix grated bread, anchovies, herbs, salt, suet, oysters, mace, pepper, egg yolks, and cream over low heat until thick.

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

Bake and serve

  1. Place small bits of butter on top of the fish.

  2. Bake the pike in the oven until cooked through.

  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
Forms the main body of the dish, holding the stuffing while it bakes.
Egg yolks
Thicken the stuffing as they set with gentle heat, giving it a firm, cohesive texture.
Grated bread
Absorbs the cream and binds the stuffing so it holds together when cooked.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the stuffing soft and tender as it cooks.
Suet
Adds fat that enriches the stuffing and keeps it moist during baking.
Oysters
Contribute savory, briny flavor and some body to the stuffing.

The step that matters

Thickening the stuffing over low heat. Egg yolks scramble if the heat is too high. Cooking gently over low heat lets them thicken the mixture smoothly, so the stuffing sets rather than curdles before it goes 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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