Skip to main content
Main

Fried Eels

Fried eels seasoned with salt and pepper, coated in flour, fried, then simmered with water and ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Fried Eels

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the eels into pieces three inches long.

  2. Season the eels with coarse sea salt and black pepper, then dredge them in flour.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat a frying pan with butter and lard until hot.

  2. Add the eels to the pan, cover, and fry until light brown, about 10 minutes.

  3. Turn the eels, baste, and fry for another 10 minutes.

  4. Transfer the eels to a warm chafing dish.

  5. Add hot water to the pan, boil for 1 minute, and stir from the bottom.

  6. Stir in tomato ketchup and pour the mixture into the gravy dish.

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 + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

Flour and butter 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 dish, cooking through while the flour crust browns.
Flour
Coats the eels so the surface browns and crisps during frying.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the frying fat and aids browning.
Lard
Provides a high-temperature frying fat that helps the coating brown evenly.
Tomato ketchup
Adds sweetness and acidity to the pan gravy.

The step that matters

Dredging and frying the eels. Flour coating must be dry and even, and the pan must be hot before the eels go in. Otherwise the coating absorbs fat unevenly, steams instead of browning, and the eels stick or turn greasy.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, flour, butter, ketchup):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, flour, butter, ketchup. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipesCream Tomato SoupCream Tomato Soup28 recipes