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To Bake Pike

Baked pike stuffed with forcemeat, coated in egg and breadcrumbs, then baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

To Bake Pike

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the fish

  1. Remove the gills from the pike and empty the inside, cleaning it thoroughly. Wipe the fish dry.

  2. Hang the fish in a cool place for 1–2 hours, or wrap it in a cloth.

Stuff and coat

  1. Fill the body with forcemeat and sew it up securely, curling it and fastening the tail into the mouth with a skewer.

  2. Dip the fish in beaten eggs seasoned with salt and pepper. Cover the fish with bread crumbs. Dip the fish again in the egg and crumbs.

  3. Pour clarified butter over the fish.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 400 °F (200 °C) for 1 hour and 15 minutes, longer if the fish is large.

  2. Serve with melted butter and brown caper or Dutch 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. Oyster + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,545 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Oyster + eggtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,103 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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 its firm flesh holds the stuffing and coating during baking.
Forcemeat
Fills the body, adding moisture and a tender, rich texture as it cooks inside the fish.
Eggs
Bind the bread crumb coating to the fish and help it set into a golden crust.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned coating that protects the fish from drying out in the oven.
Clarified butter
Adds fat that promotes browning and a rich flavour on the crumb crust.

The step that matters

Dipping and coating the fish. The egg must be spread evenly and the crumbs pressed on well, because the egg binds the crumbs and gaps let the fish dry out during baking.

“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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