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Fried Eels

Fried eels coated in seasoned flour and cooked in hot drippings, finished with a flour slurry and boiled water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 50,459 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Fried Eels

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eels

  1. Wash the eels thoroughly.

  2. Place the eels in cold water and heat quickly.

  3. Drain the eels and roll them in seasoned flour.

Fry and make the gravy

  1. Fry the eels in hot drippings until cooked.

  2. Pour out most of the fat from the pan.

  3. Stir in 1 tablespoon of dry flour and brown it.

  4. Add 1 pint of boiling water and season with salt and pepper.

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. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 firms and turns opaque as it cooks.
Flour
Forms a light coating that crisps during frying and thickens the gravy when browned.
Hot drippings
Conduct heat for frying and carry flavor into the coating and gravy.

The step that matters

Browning the flour in the pan fat. Cooking flour in fat until golden removes its raw taste and gives the gravy a nutty color and flavor. Adding the boiling water too early, or leaving the flour pale, leaves lumps and a floury taste.

“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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