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To Boil Pike

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Fish and oyster work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 496 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

To Boil Pike

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the gills and clean the fish 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 it with cold water.

  2. Add coarse sea salt as soon as the water boils.

  3. Skim the surface and boil the fish gently for 30 minutes to 1 hour, depending on its size.

  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 + oystertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together496 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. 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
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked whole and gently so the flesh stays moist and flakes.
Vinegar
Its acidity in the soaking mixture helps draw out muddy flavours from the fish.
Oyster forcemeat or veal forcemeat
Fills the cavity, adding richness and moisture as the fish cooks.
Plain melted butter or anchovy sauce
Adds fat and savoury richness to the cooked fish at the table.

The step that matters

Boil the fish gently. Keeping the water at a gentle simmer rather than a hard boil keeps the delicate flesh from breaking apart and toughening. Skimming the surface removes foam that would otherwise cloud the liquid and cling to the fish.

“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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