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To Bake Pike

Baked pike fillet seasoned with salt, cayenne, and optional forcemeat, then baked until cooked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 (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.

  2. Wipe the fish clean with a coarse cloth, moving from head to tail.

  3. Wash the fish well in cold water.

  4. Empty the fish.

  5. Clean the inside thoroughly.

  6. Fill the fish with forcemeat or a mixture of salt and cayenne.

  7. Sew the fish up.

  8. Fasten the tail to the mouth.

  9. Dredge the outside lightly with flour.

  10. Dot the fish with small pieces of butter.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for 30 to 45 minutes for medium-sized pike, or up to 1 hour for larger pike.

  2. Serve with melted butter and lemon or anchovy sauce if needed.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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
The main fish, whose firm flesh holds its shape and bakes into flakes during cooking.
Flour
Dusting the outside helps create a light coating that promotes gentle browning in the oven.
Butter
Melting over the fish adds moisture and richness, and helps the surface brown.

The step that matters

Fasten the tail to the mouth. Sewing the fish closed and securing its shape keeps the stuffing inside and helps the fish bake evenly as a whole, rather than splitting or drying at the thin ends.

“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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