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
Soak the cleaned pike in a mixture of 1 cup vinegar and enough water to cover it for 30 minutes.
Wipe the inside of the fish dry and fill it with oyster forcemeat or veal forcemeat.
Curl the fish and fasten it with the tail in the mouth.
Boil and serve
Place the fish on a draining rack and cover it with cold water.
Add coarse sea salt as soon as the water boils and skim the surface.
Boil the fish gently for 30 minutes to 1 hour, depending on its size.
Serve with plain melted butter, sauce-cruets, and lemon, or with Dutch, brown caper, or anchovy sauce.
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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Fish + oystertop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together496 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,488 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together8,184 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
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Oyster + saucetop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,233 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
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Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together15,338 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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 fish that is cooked whole and firm enough to hold its curled shape.
- Vinegar
- Added to the soaking liquid, it adds a faint acidity that helps firm the flesh.
- Oyster forcemeat or veal forcemeat
- Stuffing that fills the cavity, adding moisture and richness to the fish as it cooks.
The step that matters
Boil the fish gently. Boiling hard can break up the delicate flesh and cause it to fall apart, so keep the water at a gentle simmer for the full cooking time.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, fish, oyster, butter, sauce):
- Lemonthe original
- Grapefits about as well
- Coconutfits about as well
- Plumfits about as well
Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, fish, oyster, butter, sauce. 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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