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Eel Soup

A savory soup made with eels, onions, butter, herbs, and a roux thickening.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Winter savory and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 780 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Eel Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Cut the onions in half and make cross cuts on them.

  2. Melt the butter in a stew-pan, add the onions, and lightly brown them.

  3. Cut the eels into pieces and add them to the stew-pan, shaking for 5 minutes.

  4. Add boiling water and remove any scum that forms.

  5. Add winter savory, lemon thyme, parsley, allspice, and black pepper.

Simmer and strain

  1. Cover and simmer gently for 2 hours, then strain and skim the soup.

Make the thickened soup

  1. In a separate pan, melt 3 ounces of butter, stir in enough flour to make a thick paste, and gradually add the soup liquor.

  2. Let it simmer for 10 minutes, then pass it through a sieve.

  3. Serve the soup with small pieces of fried fish added just before serving.

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. Winter savory + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together780 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Thyme + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,077 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  5. Winter savory + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together287 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Eels
Give the soup its main body and rich, savoury flavour as they cook slowly in the liquid.
Butter
Carries the onion flavour and adds richness, and in the paste it helps thicken the soup.
Flour
Forms a thick paste with butter that thickens the strained soup liquor.
Onions
Browning in butter builds a sweet, savoury base for the broth.

The step that matters

Thickening the flour and butter paste. Flour must be cooked in the melted butter before the liquor is added; stirring it smooth and adding the liquid gradually prevents lumps and a raw floury taste.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, winter savory, lemon, thyme, parsley, allspice, pepper):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, winter savory, lemon, thyme, parsley, allspice, pepper. 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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