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Pike, Larded and Roasted
Scale and cleanse a moderate-sized pike. Remove the gills, empty the fish, and lard it thickly over with strips of fresh bacon. Fill it with a good veal forcemeat, and sew the body up securely with soft cotton. Butter a paper thickly, cover it with sweet herbs and a little pepper and salt. Wrap the fish in this, lay it in a cradle-spit, and baste with butter. Serve on a hot dish, and send piquant or caper sauce to table in a tureen. If preferred, the pike may be roasted in this way without being larded. Time to roast, twenty-five to thirty-five minutes. Probable cost, uncertain. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A whole stuffed fish cooked on a cradle spit before an open fire, which translates cleanly to a hot oven and a sheet of buttered parchment. The main adjustments are the vessel, the fish itself, and the fact that a stuffed fish needs a temperature check rather than a fixed clock.
- Cradle spit to ovenA cradle spit is a hinged wire basket that held a whole fish while it turned before the fire. Roast instead at 400F on a rack in a shallow pan, turning the parcel once at the halfway point so both sides colour evenly.
- What "moderate-sized" meansA pike for five or six people is probably in the region of 3 to 4 lb dressed. Much under 3 lb leaves little room for forcemeat; much over 5 lb risks the tail drying before the stuffing is hot.
- The buttered paperUse parchment, generously buttered on the side touching the fish, with the herbs, pepper and salt pressed into the butter. Tie it at intervals with cotton string rather than relying on the paper to hold. It is closely related to cooking en papillote, and the paper is doing real work: it keeps the flesh from drying in dry radiant heat.
- LardingLarding needles are rare now. Lay thin strips of unsmoked streaky bacon or fatback along the fish inside the paper, or thread short strips through shallow slits cut on the diagonal. Smoked bacon will dominate the pike, which is a mild fish.
- Veal forcemeatAbout 1 lb of forcemeat fills a 4 lb pike: minced veal bound with breadcrumbs, egg, suet or butter, parsley, lemon zest and mace. Pack it loosely; a tightly stuffed cavity heats slowly and splits the skin.
- Timing and temperatureTwenty-five to thirty-five minutes is about right at 400F, but a stuffed fish is judged by the stuffing. The veal forcemeat should reach 165F at the centre, and the fish flesh 145F; check with a thermometer through the paper near the end.
- BonesPike carries a row of forked Y-bones above the ribs that will not lift out with the fillet. Warn anyone at the table, or have the fishmonger remove the gills, gut and pin bones and leave the Y-bones in place, since taking them out opens the cavity you need for the forcemeat.
- If you cannot get pikeWalleye, zander or a whole trout of similar weight all take the same treatment. Sew the cavity with plain cotton thread or close it with skewers, and remove the thread before serving.
- The saucesCaper sauce here is a butter or veloute sauce with capers and a little of their vinegar; sauce piquante is a brown sauce sharpened with shallots, vinegar and gherkins. Both are sent to table separately in a tureen, as the recipe directs, rather than poured over the fish.
Pike was a prestige freshwater fish in Britain and northern Europe for centuries, valued for firm white flesh that could carry rich stuffings and sharp sauces in a way that few river fish could; medieval and early modern households kept it in stew ponds, and it appears in English cookery books from the medieval period onward. Roasting a whole fish larded with bacon and wrapped in buttered, herbed paper is a technique of the open hearth: the fat and the paper together helped compensate for the fierce, uneven radiant heat of a fire, and a cradle spit -- a hinged frame rather than a skewer -- suited delicate items such as fish. Cassell's, compiled in the 1870s for middle-class households whose kitchens were shifting from range to closed oven, still records the older equipment alongside the note "probable cost, uncertain", which may reflect how variable the supply and price of pike were.