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Fried Eels

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley 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 ↓

Fried Eels

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Skin and clean the eels, then split them open and cut into short pieces.

  2. Make a pickle with vinegar, lemon juice, sliced onion, coarse sea salt, and black pepper.

  3. Place the eels in the pickle and let them marinate for 2 to 3 hours.

  4. Roll the marinated eels in flour.

  5. Fry the eels in lard or clarified butter until golden brown.

  6. Serve the fried eels dry, garnished with fried parsley, and offer plain butter as a sauce.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + peppertop 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

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Kalefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, lemon, pepper, flour, butter, parsley. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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