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Conger-eel

A dish of fried conger eel topped with a spice and wine mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,609 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Conger-eel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eel

  1. Clean and prepare the conger eel.

  2. Fry the eel until cooked through.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a bowl, mix together pepper, asafetida, cumin, wild marjoram, dried onion, and hard-boiled egg yolks.

  2. Add vinegar, sweet wine, and garum to the mixture.

  3. Pour the mixture over the fried eel 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. Pepper + marjoramtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cumin + marjoramtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together36 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Cumin + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,498 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Pepper + cumintop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,382 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Conger eel
Forms the main body of the dish and is cooked through by frying.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Thicken the sauce and give it a rich, smooth body.
Vinegar
Adds sharpness that balances the richness of the yolks and fried fish.
Sweet wine
Contributes sweetness and aroma that offset the acidity of the vinegar.
Garum
Adds savoury depth as a fermented fish sauce.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, cumin, marjoram, egg, vinegar, wine):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, cumin, marjoram, egg, vinegar, wine. 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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