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Baking Pike

A baked pike stuffed with bread crumbs, herbs, and optional anchovy sauce or shrimp.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Baking Pike

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Ensure the pike is clean and dry before stuffing.

  2. In a bowl, combine bread crumbs and enough eggs to moisten the crumbs. Add thyme, marjoram, mace, salt, and pepper to the mixture. Incorporate suet or butter to keep the stuffing moist.

Stuff and roast

  1. Stuff the pike without overcrowding and roast it on a spit or in the oven.

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. Thyme + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Marjoram + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Bread + anchovytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,260 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Pike
Is the main fish that is stuffed and roasted, so it forms the body of the dish.
Bread crumbs
Form the base of the stuffing and absorb moisture from the eggs and fat.
Eggs
Bind the bread crumbs together so the stuffing holds its shape.
Suet or butter
Adds fat that keeps the stuffing moist during roasting.

The step that matters

Stuff without overcrowding. Packing the cavity too full leaves the stuffing dense and can stop heat from reaching the center evenly, so the fish may cook unevenly. Loose stuffing lets heat move through and cook both the fish and the filling.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, egg, thyme, marjoram, pepper, butter, anchovy):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Winter savoryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, egg, thyme, marjoram, pepper, butter, anchovy. 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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