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Conger Eel, Baked

Baked conger eel stuffed with bread crumbs, parsley, thyme, pepper, salt, mace, butter, and egg yolk, topped with butter and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Conger Eel, Baked

Oven, in the book's wordsA good oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare

  1. Wash the conger eel thoroughly.

  2. Prepare a forcemeat by mixing bread crumbs, parsley, thyme, pepper, salt, mace, butter, and egg yolk.

  3. Stuff the eel with the forcemeat and bind it securely with string or tape.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the eel in a deep dish with a little water.

  2. Dredge flour over the eel and place small lumps of butter on top.

  3. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven, basting often for about one hour.

  4. Once cooked, thicken the gravy and create a sauce of your choice.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  4. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

Conger eel
Provides the main protein, which firms and flakes as it cooks through.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and bind with the egg yolk to form a stuffing that holds its shape.
Egg yolk
Binds the forcemeat together and helps it set as it cooks.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the top brown in the oven.
Flour
Dusted over the eel, it helps thicken the pan juices into a gravy and aids browning.

The step that matters

Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven, basting often for about one hour.. Regular basting keeps the eel moist as it cooks, while the hot oven sets the stuffing and browns the surface. Too little basting can leave the flesh dry.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, parsley, thyme, pepper, butter, egg, flour):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, parsley, thyme, pepper, butter, egg, 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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