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Stewed Eels a LA Francaise

A stew of eels simmered with parsley, thyme, onion, butter, lemon, and a sauce thickened with flour and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Stewed Eels a LA Francaise

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the eels

  1. In a saucepan, combine eels, parsley, thyme, onion, butter, lemon juice, salt, pepper, and boiling water.

  2. Cook gently until the eels are tender.

  3. Remove the eels with a perforated spoon and keep warm.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Strain the gravy, thicken it with flour, and boil for 3 minutes.

  2. Beat the eggs and quickly stir them into the sauce, removing from heat before they curdle.

  3. Pour the sauce over the eels and serve.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Thyme + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eels
Provide the main body of the dish, cooked gently until tender in the seasoned liquid.
Eggs
Thicken the sauce and add richness as they set gently in the hot gravy.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the cooking liquid, giving the gravy a smooth mouthfeel.
Flour (in the method)
Thickens the strained gravy so it coats the eels rather than running off.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich gravy and balances the butter and eggs.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs to the sauce. Egg proteins set at higher temperatures, so if the sauce is too hot or stirred too slowly, the eggs curdle into lumps. Stirring quickly and removing the pan from heat keeps the sauce smooth and creamy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, thyme, butter, lemon, pepper, egg):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, thyme, butter, lemon, pepper, egg. 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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