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Eel Soup

A soup made from eels simmered with butter, water, onion, herbs, mace, peppercorns, and seasoned with salt, thickened with flour and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread 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 ↓

Eel Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eels

  1. Soak the eels in salt and water.

  2. Cut off the heads of the eels. Bone the eels. Slice the eels thinly.

  3. Simmer the eels in a stewpan with the butter for 10 minutes.

Make the soup

  1. Add the water, onion, sweet herbs, mace, peppercorns, and salt.

  2. Simmer until the eels are tender.

  3. Remove the eels and strain the liquid.

  4. Make a smooth batter with the flour and cream.

  5. Combine the batter with the strained liquid.

  6. Bring the mixture to a boil.

Serve

  1. Pour the mixture over the sliced eels in a tureen.

  2. Serve with diced toasted bread.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Onion + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,676 recipes

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

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
Form the main body of the soup, becoming tender during long gentle simmering.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour when the eels are first simmered.
Flour
Thickens the liquid when mixed into the batter and heated.
Cream
Adds richness and a smoother, softer texture to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Combine the batter with the strained liquid. Flour mixed into cream must be smooth before it meets hot liquid, or it forms lumps. Bringing the mixture to a boil then cooks out the raw flour taste and thickens the soup.

Swap the mace

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

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

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