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Stewed Eels

A stew of eels simmered with onion juice, parsley, pepper, salt, and thickened with white roux.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Stewed Eels

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Skin and clean the eels, removing all the fat.

  2. Cut the eels into 1-inch lengths.

  3. Cover the eels with cold water.

Stew and finish

  1. Cook gently for 45 minutes.

  2. Season with onion juice, chopped parsley, pepper, and salt.

  3. Stew for an additional 15 minutes.

  4. Thicken with 2 tablespoons of white roux.

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

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

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

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

  3. 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

Eels
Provide the main protein, which becomes tender through slow, gentle stewing.
White roux
Thickens the cooking liquid into a body-rich sauce as its starch swells with heat.

The step that matters

Thicken with white roux. Roux must be stirred into liquid that is hot but not boiling, or it clumps. Its starch thickens the stew only once it has been heated long enough to swell.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, pepper. 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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