Skip to main content
Main

Fried Eels

Fried eels are cleaned eel pieces boiled with aromatics, coated in egg and breadcrumbs, then fried until brown and served with tartar sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Thyme and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,563 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Fried Eels

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the eels

  1. Cover the eels in a saucepan with cold water, salt, pepper, thyme, onion, carrot, and vinegar.

  2. Bring to a boil, then remove from heat and let cool.

  3. Drain and dry the eels.

Coat and fry

  1. Beat the egg and mix with bread crumbs.

  2. Dip each piece of eel in the egg mixture.

  3. Fry in hot drippings until brown.

Serve

  1. Serve on a dish with 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. Thyme + carrottop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Thyme + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Eels
Main protein; poaching makes them tender before they are coated and fried.
Egg
Binds the bread crumbs so they adhere to the eel pieces.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned coating when fried.
Vinegar
Adds acidity to the poaching liquid, sharpening the flavor of the eels.

The step that matters

Drying the eels before coating. Surface moisture keeps the egg and bread crumbs from sticking evenly and steams the coating, so it fries less crisp when dropped into hot drippings.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, thyme, carrot, vinegar, egg, bread):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, thyme, carrot, vinegar, egg, bread. 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes