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Eels a LA Tartare

A baked eel dish coated with eggs, bread crumbs, parsley, thyme, cayenne, and finished with butter and anchovy essence.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Eels a LA Tartare

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Clean the eels by removing the skin and bones, then cut them into 4-inch pieces.

  2. Beat the eggs and coat the inside of the eel pieces.

  3. Mix bread crumbs with parsley, thyme, and cayenne, then sprinkle over the eel pieces.

Bake

  1. Place the eels in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

  2. Baste the eels with melted butter mixed with essence of anchovies while cooking.

  3. Cook until the skin turns up, indicating they are done.

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

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

  3. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  4. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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, cooking to a tender, flaky texture.
Eggs
Bind the coating so the bread crumbs adhere to the eel pieces.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned crust around the eel pieces as they bake.
Butter
Adds moisture and richness, and helps the surface brown while basting.

The step that matters

Cook until the skin turns up. Eel is done when the skin curls upward, a visible sign of protein contraction. Pulling the pieces too early leaves the flesh undercooked, while overcooking dries them out.

Swap the thyme

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Thymethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, egg, bread, parsley, pepper, butter. 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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