Skip to main content
Main

Eels Stewed with Sorrel

A stew of eels cooked with sorrel, sage, onion, anchovy, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sage and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 887 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Eels Stewed with Sorrel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the cleaned eels into pieces and season with salt and black pepper.

Stew

  1. In a stew pan, melt the butter and add the sorrel, sage leaves, onion, lemon peel, and anchovy.

  2. Add the eels and pour in the water.

  3. Stew gently for 30 minutes, shaking occasionally.

Finish and serve

  1. Before serving, add grated nutmeg and lemon juice.

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. Sage + lemontop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together887 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Sage + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together642 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  5. Sorrel + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together89 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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, becoming tender as they stew slowly.
Sorrel
Adds a sharp, lemony green flavour that suits the rich fish.
Butter
Carries flavour and adds richness to the stewing liquid.
Anchovy
Adds savoury depth that rounds out the fish flavour without tasting fishy.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the stew just before serving.

The step that matters

Stewing gently. Eels are delicate and can toughen or break apart if boiled hard. A gentle simmer keeps the flesh tender and moist while flavours blend.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, butter, sorrel, sage, lemon, anchovy, nutmeg):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Kalefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, sorrel, sage, lemon, anchovy, nutmeg. 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesSorrel SoupSorrel Soup23 recipesSorrel SaladSorrel Salad9 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipes