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Broiled Eels

Broiled eels are cleaned, cut, coated in flour and breadcrumbs, grilled, and served with parsley and tartar sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley 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 ↓

Broiled Eels

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eel

  1. Skin and clean the eel.

  2. Remove the backbone and cut the eel into 5 or 6 pieces.

Coat and broil

  1. Dip each piece into flour, then into salted and peppered bread crumbs.

  2. Place on a greased grill with the skin side down over a clear fire.

  3. Broil, turning over when one side is done.

Serve

  1. Serve on a hot dish, garnished with parsley and accompanied by tartar 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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Bread + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,588 recipes

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

  4. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Flour + saucetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Eel
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked through by broiling over direct heat.
Flour
Dry coating that helps the bread crumbs adhere to the eel pieces.
Bread crumbs
Forms a crisp, browned crust on the outside of the eel pieces.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Capersfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Turmericfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, bread, pepper, sauce. 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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