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Eels in Port Wine

Stewed eels simmered in stock, port wine, onion, lemon, and spices, then thickened with flour and served with sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,150 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Eels in Port Wine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eels

  1. Wash and skin the eels, then cut them into 3‑inch pieces.

  2. Season the eels with salt and pepper, and place them in a stewpan.

Stew

  1. Pour the stock over the eels, add the onion with cloves, lemon peel, and port wine.

  2. Stew gently for about 1 hour, then carefully lift the eels onto a warm dish.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Strain the gravy, stir in enough flour to thicken, and mix well.

  2. Boil the gravy for 2 minutes, then add cayenne and lemon juice.

  3. Pour the sauce over the eels 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. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Port wine + clovetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together914 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  4. Clove + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,671 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eels
Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender when gently stewed.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth, lightly bodied gravy.
Port wine
Adds depth, sweetness and aroma to the stewing liquid and gravy.
Stock
Provides the liquid that cooks the eels and forms the base of the gravy.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, thickened gravy.

The step that matters

Stew gently for about 1 hour. Eels are delicate; a gentle simmer keeps them tender and intact, while a hard boil can toughen and break the pieces apart.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (port wine, onion, clove, cream, flour):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Plumfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against port wine, onion, clove, 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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