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To Collar Eels

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 507 recipes. Both carry 2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

To Collar Eels

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Clean the eels by removing the head, gutting, and taking out the bones.

  2. Lay the eel flat on its back and grate nutmeg over it.

  3. Sprinkle with mace, pepper, and coarse sea salt, then add chopped parsley and sage.

  4. Roll the eel tightly in a cloth and bind it well.

  5. Boil in salted water for 45 minutes, then hang to drain overnight.

  6. Prepare the pickle by boiling vinegar, peppercorns, and sweet marjoram for 10 minutes.

  7. Remove the cloth from the eel and place it in the pickle.

  8. Serve whole or sliced, garnished with green parsley.

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. Sage + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together507 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Parsley + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Nutmeg + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together687 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Parsley + sagetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,445 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

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

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against nutmeg, pepper, parsley, sage, vinegar, marjoram. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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