Name: Eels, Sauce for
Ingredients: Eels; Capers; Sorrel; Parsley; Butter

Why it works: Capers and sorrel share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Eels, Sauce for

Ingredients

Directions

Cook eels without their skins for a delicate flavor.
Serve boiled eels with a mild sauce made from capers, sorrel, or parsley and butter.
If using eels with skins, prepare a piquant sauce instead.

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.

Capers + sorreltop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together20 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Capers + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,550 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Sorrel + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together234 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together28,563 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Capers + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,637 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).