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Eel Broth

A clear broth made by simmering small eels with water, parsley, onion, peppercorns, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Eel Broth

Why it works: Parsley and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 25,843 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Eel Broth

yield about 1½ pints of broth

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Clean the eels and place them in a pot with water, parsley, onion, and peppercorns.

  2. Simmer until the eels break apart and the broth is flavorful.

  3. Add salt to taste and strain the broth.

Yield

  1. Yield about 1½ pints of broth.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Small eels
Break down during simmering to release gelatin and flavor into the broth.
Water
Serves as the cooking liquid that extracts flavor from the eels and aromatics.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and savory depth to the broth.

The step that matters

Simmering the eels. Simmering gently rather than boiling keeps the broth clear and lets the eels release flavor and gelatin slowly without becoming cloudy or greasy.

“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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