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To Boil Pike

A boiled pike stuffed with oysters, bread crumbs, lemon peel, butter, egg yolks, and herbs, served with oyster sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 Boil Pike

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Remove the gills and guts from the Pike and wash it thoroughly.

  2. Make a forcemeat by mixing chopped oysters, bread crumbs, lemon peel, butter, egg yolks, and sweet herbs. Season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  3. Stuff the forcemeat into the belly of the Pike and sew it up.

Boil and serve

  1. Boil water with a little salt and vinegar.

  2. Once boiling, add the Pike.

  3. Cook for about 30 minutes or until done.

  4. Serve with oyster sauce poured over the fish and garnish with pickled barberries.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  5. Oyster + eggtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,103 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (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, cooked whole by boiling until done.
Egg yolks
Bind the forcemeat so the stuffing holds together during cooking.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the forcemeat stuffing.
Bread crumbs
Soak up liquid and give the forcemeat body and a soft texture.
Oysters
Add a briny, savoury flavour to the forcemeat stuffing.

The step that matters

Stuff and sew the Pike. The forcemeat must be packed firmly but not too tightly, and the belly well sewn, so the stuffing stays inside while the fish cooks and the egg yolks set the forcemeat.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, lemon, butter, egg, pepper, vinegar):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, lemon, butter, egg, pepper, vinegar. 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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