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To Bake Pike

A whole pike stuffed with oyster forcemeat, seasoned, baked, and served with a sauce of butter, anchovy essence, lemon, sherry, and Harvey's sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

To Bake Pike

Oven, in the book's wordsA steady oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a steady oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the fish

  1. Stuff the cleaned pike with oyster forcemeat and skewer the tail to the mouth.

  2. Sprinkle the fish with coarse sea salt and dredge lightly with flour.

  3. Dot the fish with small pieces of butter.

Bake and make the sauce

  1. Bake in a steady oven at 350°F (175°C) for 40 to 50 minutes, depending on the size of the fish.

  2. For the sauce, add melted butter, essence of anchovies, grated lemon peel or lemon pickle, sherry, Harvey's sauce, and cayenne to the juices in the dish after baking.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  4. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Oyster + saucetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,233 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.
Butter
Dotted over the fish to add richness and moisture as it bakes, and melted into the sauce.
Flour
Lightly dredged on the fish to help form a dry surface that can brown in the oven.
Oyster forcemeat
Stuffed into the fish to add savoury flavour and moisture to the inside as it cooks.
Sherry
Adds acidity and depth to the sauce made from the baking juices.

The step that matters

Baking time. Pike is cooked when the flesh turns opaque and flakes easily, and timing depends on the fish's size. Overbaking dries the delicate flesh, so check early and take it out as soon as it flakes.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, flour, butter, sherry, sauce, pepper):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Plumfits about as well
  4. Grapefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, flour, butter, sherry, sauce, pepper. 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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