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Eel Soup, White

A clear soup made with eels, onions, butter, flour, milk, and egg yolks, seasoned with salt, pepper, mace, lemon peel, and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Eel Soup, White

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eels

  1. Set a saucepan of water on the fire and season with salt, whole pepper, mace, lemon peel, and sweet herbs.

  2. When the water boils, add the eels and cook until the flesh separates from the bone.

  3. Remove the eels, split them in two, and remove the bones.

Make the soup

  1. Chop the onions finely and roll butter in flour.

  2. In a stewpan, melt the butter with the onions and gradually moisten with eel broth.

  3. Once the onions are tender, add the remaining broth (removing herbs and lemon peel) and stir in fresh milk.

  4. Add the eel pieces and heat until hot throughout.

  5. Thicken the soup with egg yolks mixed into a little broth.

  6. Taste and adjust seasoning; a sprinkle of sugar enhances the flavor.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Lemon + teatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together610 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Tea + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together738 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  5. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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

Eels
Provide the main flesh and savoury body of the soup.
Butter
Enriches the soup with fat and carries the flavour of the onions.
Flour
Rolled with butter to thicken the soup as it cooks.
White onions
Soften into a sweet, mild base that gives the soup its body.
Fresh milk
Adds creaminess and softens the broth's flavour.
Egg yolks
Thicken and enrich the soup when stirred in gently.

The step that matters

Thickening with egg yolks. Egg yolks set at about 65 to 70 degrees Celsius and can curdle or scramble if the soup boils. Mix them with a little warm broth first, then stir them in off the heat or over very low heat.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, lemon, onion, butter, flour, tea, milk):

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, lemon, onion, butter, flour, tea, 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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