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Broehet a l’Etuv^e — Stewed Pike

A stewed pike cooked with butter, flour, red wine, herbs, onions, and capers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Capers and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,550 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Broehet a l’Etuv^e — Stewed Pike

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Brown the butter with flour in a pot.

  2. Add the red wine, fine herbs, cloves, parboiled onions, pepper, and salt.

  3. Add the pike pieces and let it simmer over low heat until fully cooked.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the herbs, then stir in melted butter, capers, and anchovies.

  2. Add artichoke bottoms or mushrooms if desired.

  3. Garnish with fried parsley and pour the sauce over the fish.

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. Capers + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,550 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Flour + caperstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,024 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Clove + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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 gently in the wine sauce until tender.
Flour
Thickens the butter and wine into a smooth sauce as it cooks.
Red wine
Forms the cooking liquid and adds acidity and depth to the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and a nutty flavour when browned, and rounds out the finished sauce.
Capers
Add a sharp, salty bite that cuts through the richness of the sauce.
Anchovies
Dissolve into the sauce, adding savoury depth and salt.

The step that matters

Simmer the pike over low heat. Fish protein toughens and dries quickly at high heat. A gentle simmer cooks the pike through while keeping it moist and tender in the sauce.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, red wine, clove, pepper, capers, parsley):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, red wine, clove, pepper, capers, parsley. 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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