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Soup

Three Pounds of Conger Eel and Two Calves’ Feet

A broth made by boiling conger eel and calves' feet, then adding herbs, milk, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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. Boil the conger eel and calves' feet in 2 quarts of water until the eel is reduced to rags.

  2. Strain the mixture.

  3. Add sweet herbs and asparagus or peas, or use fennel and haricot beans instead.

Finish the soup

  1. Stir in 1 pint of milk and a walnut-sized piece of butter.

  2. Add 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. Fennel + walnuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together74 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Fennel + flourtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together455 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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 boiling to give the broth body and savoury flavour.
Calves' feet
Release gelatin into the broth, giving it a richer, silkier body.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mild sweetness, softening the broth's flavour.
Flour
Starch swells in the hot liquid, thickening the soup.

The step that matters

Adding the flour to thicken. Flour must be mixed in smoothly and cooked through, since raw starch clumps in hot liquid and tastes pasty. Stirring it into a small amount of liquid first helps prevent lumps.

Swap the fennel

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Fennelthe 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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