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Eel Soup

A soup made from eels, water, onion, mace, pepper, herbs, bread crust, carrot, and optional cream or flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,555 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Eel Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eels

  1. Clean and cut the eels into pieces.

  2. In a pot, combine eels and water.

Make the soup

  1. Add onion, mace, whole pepper, sweet herbs, and bread crust.

  2. Cover and simmer until the fish separates, then strain the mixture.

Assemble and serve

  1. Toast the bread until deep brown, then cut into triangles or squares.

  2. Place the carrot slices in a tureen with the toast.

  3. Pour the strained soup over the toast and carrot.

  4. If desired, add boiling cream thickened with flour.

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 + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  2. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,029 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mace + carrottop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eels
Provide the main flavour and body of the soup as they break down while simmering.
Bread
Toasted bread gives a deep brown colour and soaks up the soup as the base for serving.
Flour
Thickens the optional boiling cream so it lightly coats the soup.

The step that matters

Simmer until the fish separates. Simmering gently lets the eels release their flavour and collagen slowly; a hard boil can cloud the broth and toughen the flesh, so watch for the fish to separate rather than rushing it.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, pepper, bread, carrot, cream, flour):

  1. Celeryfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, pepper, bread, carrot, cream, 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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