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Collared Eels

A preserved eel dish boiled and pickled with spices and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Collared Eels

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eels

  1. Remove the skin, head, fins, and tail from the eels.

  2. Open the belly from the tail to the head and clean it out with a cloth.

  3. Use a sharp knife to open the back and remove the backbone and any other bones.

  4. Soak the fish in salt and water for 2 hours, then dry it thoroughly.

Season and roll

  1. Spread the anchovies, saltpetre, coarse sea salt, mace, cayenne pepper, and chopped parsley inside the fish.

  2. Roll the fish tightly from the tail and sew it up in a cloth.

Cook and pickle

  1. Boil the fish for 10 minutes, then let it simmer for another 10 minutes.

  2. Remove the fish and place it in a jar.

  3. Boil vinegar and water with black peppercorns and a little salt, then let it cool.

  4. Pour the cooled pickle over the fish and press it down to exclude air.

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

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

  2. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  3. Mace + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,268 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Parsley + vinegartop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,477 recipes

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

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Eels
Main protein; the flesh becomes firm and tender when cooked and pickled.
Anchovies
Adds deep savoury umami flavour that blends into the fish.
Saltpetre
Helps cure the fish and keeps its flesh pink and firm.
Vinegar
Acidity in the pickle preserves the fish and gives it a sharp tang.

The step that matters

Pressing the fish under the cooled pickle. Pressing the fish down and covering it with liquid excludes air, which limits spoilage by oxidation and microbial growth. The pickle must be cool so it does not partly cook the fish again before it is sealed.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, parsley, vinegar):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Dillfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, parsley, vinegar. 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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