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Eel Soup

A soup made from fresh‑water eels, onion, mace, pepper, salt, lemon, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Eel Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eels

  1. Clean the eels, removing all fat, and cut into short pieces.

  2. Wipe the eels dry and fry them in the same pan.

Make the soup

  1. In a large pan, fry the chopped onion in plenty of dripping until brown.

  2. Transfer the eels and onion to a pot, add the mace, and cover with 3 quarts of cold water.

  3. Stew slowly for 2 hours.

  4. Season with pepper and salt, then stir in the floured butter and simmer for 3 minutes.

  5. Add the lemon juice and pour out the soup.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  5. Onion + peppertop 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

Fresh-water eels
Provide the main body of the soup, with their flesh softening during the long slow stew.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky body to the broth when stirred in with flour.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, fatty flavour of the soup.

The step that matters

Stewing slowly. A gentle simmer keeps the eels tender and the broth clear; boiling hard breaks up the flesh and makes the soup cloudy and greasy.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

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