Why it works: Egg and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Anguille Frite-- Fried Eel
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Cook and cool the eel.
Coat and fry
Dip the cooled eel in beaten eggs, then coat with bread crumbs.
Fry the coated eel in hot lard until golden brown.
Serve
Serve with hot and cold sauces.
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.
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Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together22,662 recipes
Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
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 first so it is ready to coat and fry.
- Beaten eggs
- Act as a binding layer that helps the bread crumbs adhere to the eel.
- Bread crumbs
- Form a crisp outer coating that browns during frying.
- Lard
- Conducts heat around the coating, driving browning and crispness.
The step that matters
Fry the coated eel in hot lard until golden brown. The lard must be hot enough to crisp the crumb coating quickly. If it is too cool, the coating absorbs more fat and turns greasy and may fall off the eel.
“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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