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To Boil Pike

A boiled pike seasoned with vinegar, salt, and served with melted butter or anchovy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Remove the gills and clean the pike thoroughly.

  2. Soak the fish in a mixture of 1 cup vinegar and enough water to cover it for 30 minutes to avoid a muddy taste.

  3. Dry the inside of the fish and fill it with oyster forcemeat or veal forcemeat.

  4. Curl the fish and fasten it with the tail in the mouth.

Boil and serve

  1. Place it on a fish plate and cover with cold water.

  2. Add coarse sea salt as soon as the water boils and skim the surface.

  3. Boil gently for 30 minutes to 1 hour, depending on the size of the fish.

  4. 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.

  1. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Vinegar + buttertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,513 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Vinegar + fishtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,036 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

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 through gentle boiling.
Vinegar
Soaking in vinegar and water is meant to reduce the muddy taste of the fish.
Forcemeat (in the method)
Fills the cavity, adding moisture and flavour as the fish cooks.

The step that matters

Boil gently. Vigorous boiling can break up the delicate flesh and split the skin, so the water should only simmer. Cooking time depends on the fish's size, so a larger pike needs the longer end of the range to cook through evenly.

“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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