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Baked Pike

A whole pike stuffed with mashed potato mixture, baked with onions and lemon, served with caper sauce and boiled potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,979 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Baked Pike

Oven, in the book's wordsA good oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a good oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Make a stuffing by mixing mashed potatoes, butter, eggs, parsley, marjoram, salt, pepper, nutmeg, and lemon rind.

  3. Stuff the pike with the mixture and sew it up.

  4. Chop the onion and place it in a round baking dish with salt, pepper, and butter or oil.

  5. Lay the stuffed pike on top of the onion.

  6. Squeeze lemon juice over the fish and place a few lumps of butter on top.

  7. Turn the fish around by putting the tail in the mouth and secure it with a skewer.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in the oven until cooked through.

  2. Serve with caper sauce and boiled potatoes cut to the same size.

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. Parsley + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  3. Marjoram + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together957 recipes

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

  4. Marjoram + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together687 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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 and provides the flesh that cooks through in the oven.
Mashed potatoes
Bind the stuffing and keep the filling moist and soft as the fish bakes.
Eggs
Help bind the stuffing so it holds together when cooked.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the stuffing and the baking dish.
Onion
Sits under the fish, adding aroma and moisture as it softens in the dish.

The step that matters

Bake in the oven until cooked through. Whole fish can dry out or stay underdone at the thickest point. The fish is done when the flesh turns opaque and flakes easily, and the stuffing should be hot in the centre.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, egg, parsley, marjoram, pepper, nutmeg, lemon):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, parsley, marjoram, pepper, nutmeg, lemon. 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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