Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
To Bake Pike
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare the fish
Pour warm water over the outside of the fish and wipe it clean with a coarse cloth, moving from head to tail to avoid disturbing the scales.
Wash the fish well in cold water and clean the inside thoroughly.
Stuff and close
Fill the fish with your choice of forcemeat.
Sew the fish closed, fastening the tail to the mouth.
Dress and bake
Dredge the outside of the fish with flour and place small pats of butter on top.
Bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C) for 30 to 45 minutes for a moderate-sized pike, or 1 to 1.5 hours for a large pike.
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.
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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, cooked whole so the flesh stays moist inside.
- Flour
- Dries the fish surface and helps it take on a light golden browning in the oven.
- Butter
- Adds fat that enriches the surface and promotes browning as it melts over the fish.
- Warm water
- Loosens the skin so scales can be wiped away cleanly before baking.
The step that matters
Baking time for the fish's size. Cooking time depends on the fish's size. Too short leaves the thick centre undercooked, and too long dries the flesh, so check a large pike toward the longer end of the range.
“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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