Home › Fish › Pike Baked in Sour Cream (German)
Pike Baked in Sour Cream (German)
Clean a pike weighing 3 or 4 pounds, or, if preferred, take part of a larger fish and cut into slices free from skin and bone. Mince 2 small onions very finely, and break up 2 bay leaves into little pieces. Butter a pie-dish thickly, and lay in it the slices of fish, with the onion and the bay leaves distributed amongst them. Season with salt and cayenne, and pour half a pint of sour cream over the fish. Bake in a moderate oven, and when three-fourths done strew finely grated bread crumbs thickly over it and return it to the oven to color. Lift the slices carefully into a hot dish, and make a gravy by mixing a little stock or water, and a tablespoonful of lemon juice, with the cream, etc., in the dish. Mix thoroughly. Pour the gravy round the fish, and serve very hot. Time to bake, about half an hour. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A plain baked fish in cream that depends almost entirely on not overcooking the pike and not letting the cream break. Both are handled in the oven temperature.
- OvenA moderate oven is around 350F. Much higher and the sour cream is liable to separate into grease and curd before the fish is done.
- The half pint of creamThe book's origins make this ambiguous: an imperial half pint is 10 fl oz, a US half pint is 8 fl oz. Either works for a 3-4 lb fish; use enough to come roughly halfway up the slices.
- Use full-fat sour creamLow-fat and light sour creams typically contain added starch or gums and more water, and are more likely to curdle and weep under oven heat. Full-fat sour cream or creme fraiche holds together better.
- TimingHalf an hour is right for thick steaks from a large fish; inch-thick slices will be done in 15-20 minutes. Go by the flesh turning opaque and parting from the bone rather than the clock, and add the crumbs when it is about three-quarters there.
- Pike and its bonesNorthern pike carries a row of Y-shaped intermuscular bones along the upper fillet that no amount of baking dissolves. Buy it filleted and de-boned if you can, or substitute walleye, perch, cod or haddock.
- CayenneA generous pinch is plenty; the dish should warm rather than sting.
- The gravyWhisk the stock and lemon juice into the hot pan cream off the heat or over very low heat only. Boiling it after the lemon goes in is the surest way to split it.
- Dish and yieldA shallow gratin dish or oval baker gives better crumb coverage than a deep pie-dish. Serves four to five, with boiled potatoes or dark bread.
This is Hecht in Sauerrahm, a standard of German and Central European freshwater cookery, where pike was for centuries among the most highly regarded of river and lake fish -- large, lean, firm-fleshed, and a fixture of Lenten and fast-day tables in a region far from the sea. Soured cream, thick and slightly tangy, was an everyday dairy product in northern and eastern Europe long before it became a garnish elsewhere, and baking fish or game under it is a technique that runs through German, Polish, Czech and Russian kitchens alike. The layer of grated crumbs browned at the end is the same gratin logic found across the period's cookbooks: it colors the surface and absorbs the fat that rises as the cream cooks down.