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Conger Eel Soup

A soup made with conger eel, herbs, carrot, onion, bay leaves, peas, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and pepper 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 ↓

Conger Eel Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Combine the savory herbs, sliced carrot, sliced onions, and bay leaves in a saucepan and fry until light brown.

  2. Add 4 quarts of water and bring to a boil.

  3. Skim the surface well.

  4. Season with 1 ounce of coarse sea salt and ½ ounce of black pepper.

Cook and finish

  1. Add 5 pounds of conger eel and simmer gently for 2 hours.

  2. Strain the soup and stir in 1 pint of green peas.

  3. Just before serving, add 1 pint of milk.

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. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + peastop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,994 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

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

  5. Onion + peastop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,460 recipes

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

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 flesh and rich, savory flavor of the soup as it simmers.
Onions
Frying them builds sweetness and browned depth that flavors the broth.
Green peas
Add sweetness, color and body to the strained soup.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softens the broth's flavor when added at the end.

The step that matters

Simmer gently after adding the eel. At a hard boil the fish proteins toughen and break apart, clouding the broth and making the flesh dry. A gentle simmer keeps the eel tender and the soup clear.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Sesamefits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, onion, pepper, milk. 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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