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Eels Stewed a L'americain

Stewed eels cooked with butter, onion, parsley, pepper, and sea salt until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Eels Stewed a L'americain

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the eels into pieces about 2 inches long.

  2. Season the eels with pepper and salt.

Cook

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan and add the eels.

  2. Strew the chopped onion and parsley over the eels.

  3. Cover the saucepan tightly and place it in a pot of cold water.

  4. Gradually bring the water to a boil and cook gently for 1.5 hours, or until the eels are tender.

  5. Serve in a deep dish.

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. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

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

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 and flaky through gentle, prolonged cooking.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and giving the eels a silky mouthfeel.
Young onion
Adds aromatic sharpness that mellows and sweetens gently during slow cooking.

The step that matters

Gradually bring the water to a boil and cook gently. Heating slowly in a covered saucepan set in water keeps the eel's protein from tightening and drying out. A hard boil would toughen the flesh and break it apart, so the gentle, covered heat is what makes the eels tender.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, parsley. 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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