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Three Pounds of Conger Eel and Two Calves' Feet

A soup made with conger eel, calf's feet, water, sweet herbs, asparagus or peas, milk, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Three Pounds of Conger Eel and Two Calves' Feet

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. In a pot, combine the conger eel, calves' feet, and water.

  2. Boil gently until the conger eel is reduced to rags.

  3. Strain the mixture and return the liquid to the pot.

Finish the soup

  1. Add sweet herbs and asparagus or peas, along with the milk.

  2. Stir in the butter and a little flour to thicken the mixture.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Asparagus + walnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together70 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Asparagus + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together936 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Walnut + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Conger eel
Breaks down during long simmering to give the soup body and a rich, savory flavor.
Calves' feet
Release gelatin into the liquid, giving the soup a silkier, more substantial texture.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softens the flavor of the broth.
Flour
Thickens the liquid when cooked with butter, giving the soup a smoother body.

The step that matters

Stir in the butter and flour. Flour needs to be blended with the butter and cooked into the hot liquid so it thickens smoothly; added directly to hot liquid it can form lumps.

Swap the asparagus

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, walnut, butter, flour):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Arrowrootfits about as well
  4. Asparagusthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, walnut, butter, 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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