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Eels Stewed

A stew of eels cooked with beef gravy, onions, herbs, anchovies, mustard, walnut ketchup, wine, and lemon, served with toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,445 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Eels Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eels

  1. Fry the eel pieces until they are half cooked and browned, then let them cool.

Stew

  1. In a pot, combine beef gravy, onion, parsley, white pepper, salt, sage, and mace.

  2. Add the eels to the gravy and stew until tender.

  3. Stir in the chopped anchovies, mustard, walnut ketchup, and red wine.

Finish and serve

  1. Alternatively, after stewing, add port wine and lemon juice, then strain and thicken with butter and flour.

  2. Serve with sippets of toasted bread.

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 + sagetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,445 recipes

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

  2. Sage + walnuttop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together179 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  4. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  5. Parsley + walnuttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together865 recipes

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

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 the long stewing.
Flour
Thickens the strained sauce with butter so it becomes smooth and body-rich.
Butter
Adds richness and, worked with flour, helps thicken the finished sauce.
Anchovies
Add savoury depth and a salty, umami note to the gravy.
Walnut ketchup
Adds dark, tangy savouriness that deepens the sauce's flavour.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, savoury sauce.

The step that matters

Frying the eel pieces until half cooked and browned. Browning builds flavour through the Maillard reaction, and stopping at half cooked keeps the eels from toughening or falling apart before the long stew finishes them.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, onion, parsley, sage, mace, mustard, walnut):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, onion, parsley, sage, mace, mustard, walnut. 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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