Burke is one of 14 changes from last Saturday’s 29-26 win over Maori All Blacks, with only lock Marshall Sykes keeping his place.
Townsend admits such sweeping changes for the second game of the Pacific tour brings “an element of risk” but believes history shows it is the right approach.
“You don’t get the continuity but this team has trained together for the last two or three weeks, and trained against the team that played against the Maori,” he said.
“What we will have is fresh team, too. Not many of them played against the Maori and they are raring to go.”
Scotland were commanding 57-17 winners when they played Fiji at Murrayfield eight months ago.
On that day, the tourists were without some of their best players because the game fell outside the international window, while this time it will be the Scots who will be missing big names because of the British & Irish Lions tour.
The Fijians also ran Australia close in a 21-18 defeat last Sunday.
“Their biggest strength is their physicality – they are probably the biggest men and most powerful men in world rugby,” Townsend said.
“That is what we are going to have to match and they also have the ability to score tries from nothing. They have wonderful individual players.”
