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Eel Soup

A soup made from eels, water, mace, onion, peppercorns, sweet herbs, bread crust, toasted bread dice, boiled carrot, and optional thickened cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and carrot are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 21,601 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Eel Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. In a pot, combine the eels and water.

  2. Add mace, onion, peppercorns, sweet herbs, and the crust of bread.

  3. Cover and stew until the eels begin to fall apart, then strain the mixture.

Assemble and serve

  1. Toast slices of bread until brown, then cut into dice.

  2. Cut the boiled carrot into pieces and place in a tureen.

  3. Pour the strained soup over the carrot.

  4. If desired, add boiling cream thickened with flour.

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. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Carrot + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,029 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mace + carrottop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Onion + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,676 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Bread + carrottop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,628 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 and rich flavor as they break down into the broth.
Onion
Adds savory aromatic sweetness to the broth as it simmers.
Boiling cream
Adds richness and body to the soup, thickened lightly with flour.

The step that matters

Stewing until the eels begin to fall apart. Stewing gently extracts collagen and flavor from the eels into the water. Stopping too early leaves a weak broth, while overcooking can make it cloudy and greasy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, bread, carrot, cream, flour):

  1. Celeryfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, bread, carrot, cream, flour. 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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