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Eels, Boiled, or Water Souchet of Eels

Boiled eels served in their cooking water with parsley, thin brown bread, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Eels, Boiled, or Water Souchet of Eels

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the eels until tender.

  2. Carefully skim and strain the water they were boiled in.

  3. Add one or two sprigs of parsley to the water.

  4. Serve the eels in the strained water with thin brown bread and 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,588 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Eels
Provide the main protein, which becomes tender through gentle boiling.
Parsley
Adds a fresh, green aroma to the cooking liquor.
Thin brown bread
Offers a plain, absorbent base that soaks up the flavoured liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the bread, softening its flavour and texture.

The step that matters

Boil the eels until tender. Boiling at too vigorous a rate can break up the flesh and toughen it. A gentle simmer lets the eels cook through evenly while staying intact and moist.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Sagefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, 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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