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To Bake Pike

Baked pike is a whole fish seasoned with salt, cayenne, and butter, then baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 Bake Pike

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the fish

  1. Pour warm water over the fish and wipe it clean with a coarse cloth, moving from head to tail to avoid disturbing the scales.

  2. Wash the fish well in cold water, empty it, and clean the inside thoroughly.

  3. Stuff the fish with common forcemeat or omit it and use fine salt, cayenne, and small bits of butter inside.

  4. Sew up the fish and fasten the tail to the mouth.

Bake and serve

  1. Dredge the outside lightly with flour and place small bits of butter on top.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for 30 to 45 minutes for moderate-sized pike, or 1 to 1.5 hours for large pike.

  3. If needed, serve with melted butter and lemon 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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 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
Is the main ingredient and the body that the stuffing, flour and butter surround during baking.
Flour
Coats the outside so the skin dries and browns lightly in the oven.
Butter
Adds moisture and richness as it melts over and inside the fish during baking.

The step that matters

Baking time for the fish size. Baking time depends on the fish's size. Too short leaves the thickest flesh raw near the bone, while too long dries out the delicate flesh. Check the fish is opaque and flakes easily at the thickest point.

“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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