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Eel Soup

A stew of eels simmered with onion, spices, and bread, served over toasted bread and carrot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,555 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Eel Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Cut the eels into pieces and place them in a pot.

  2. Add water, onion, mace, whole pepper, sweet herbs, and the crust of bread.

  3. Cover and stew until the fish separates, then strain the mixture.

Prepare the garnish

  1. Toast slices of bread until deep brown, then cut into triangles or squares.

  2. Cut the carrot into four lengthwise slices.

Serve

  1. In a tureen, place the toast and carrot, then pour the soup over them.

  2. If desired, add boiling cream thickened with a little flour 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. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Carrot + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,029 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mace + carrottop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Eels
Provide the main body of the soup and flavour as they break down during stewing.
Crust of bread
Adds body and helps thicken the broth as it softens during stewing.
Onion
Contributes savoury sweetness and aroma to the broth as it cooks.
Boiling cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Stewing until the fish separates. Stewing gently until the eels fall apart releases their flesh and gelatin into the water, giving the broth its body. Cooking too briefly leaves the flavour weak, while boiling hard can make the broth cloudy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, pepper, bread, carrot, cream, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, pepper, bread, carrot, 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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