Skip to main content
Main

Eel Soup

A soup of sliced eels simmered with onion, herbs, mace, peppercorns, and a cream‑flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Eel Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook the eels

  1. Wash the eels and cut them into thin slices.

  2. Melt the butter in a stewpan.

  3. Add the eels to the butter and let them simmer for a few minutes.

  4. Pour in the water and add the onion, herbs, mace, and seasoning.

  5. Simmer until the eels are tender, being careful not to break them.

  6. Remove the eels carefully.

Make the soup and serve

  1. Mix the flour smoothly with the cream.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Pour the mixture 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Onion + macetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

  5. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Provide the main body of the soup and its flesh, which turns tender during simmering.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping the eels brown lightly and carrying flavour.
Flour
Thickens the cream mixture so the finished soup has body.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the thickened broth.

The step that matters

Simmer until the eels are tender, being careful not to break them.. Eel flesh is delicate and falls apart if the heat is too high or it is stirred hard. Gentle simmering cooks it through while keeping the slices intact.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, flour, cream. 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.

More eel soup recipes

Conger 4 See all 77 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes