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To Pot Eels

A dish of eels seasoned with pepper, salt, mace, sage, and clarified butter, baked until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

To Pot Eels

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the eels

  1. Skin, gut, and clean the eels.

  2. Cut them into pieces about four inches long.

  3. Season the pieces with pepper, salt, beaten mace, and finely rubbed dried sage, rubbing the seasoning well into the eels.

Bake and store

  1. Place them in a brown pot and cover with clarified butter, then tie the pot down with strong paper.

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 1.5 hours.

  3. Remove from the oven and let cool.

  4. Transfer to small pots and cover with clarified butter.

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 + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  2. Mace + sagetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together519 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Sage + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,312 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Pepper and mace 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
Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender during the long slow bake.
Clarified butter
Covers the eels to keep them moist and rich while baking and sealing them in the pot.
Dried sage
Adds a savoury, aromatic herbal flavour to the eels.
Beaten mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavour that complements the fish.

The step that matters

Covering the eels with clarified butter. Clarified butter is pure fat with no water, so it seals the eels from air and keeps them moist during baking. If the eels are not fully covered, exposed surfaces can dry out and lose flavour over the long bake.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, sage, butter. 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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