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Curried Eel

A curry of eels simmered with onion, garlic, bay leaves, cloves, curry powder, tomato soup, and coconut milk, served over rice or potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Curried Eel

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Fry the onion, garlic, bay leaves, and cloves in butter until brown.

  2. Stir in the curry powder.

  3. Add water and tomato soup.

  4. Simmer for one hour.

  5. Add the skinned and cleaned eels, cooking them thoroughly in the sauce.

  6. Stir in the coconut milk five minutes before serving.

Fry and serve the eels

  1. Coat the eels in flour.

  2. Sprinkle with salt and Nepal pepper.

  3. Fry the coated eels in butter until golden.

  4. Serve the eels neatly stacked with parsley in between, alongside rice or potatoes.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Garlic + tomatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  5. Clove + coconuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together458 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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 as they cook in the sauce.
Coconut milk
Adds richness and body to the sauce, softening the spiced flavour.
Tomato soup
Adds acidity and savoury depth to the curry sauce.
Butter
Carries flavour when frying the onion and aromatics, and browns the coated eels.
Flour
Coats the eels so they brown in the butter and form a golden crust.
Curry powder
Supplies the main spice aroma that defines the sauce.

The step that matters

Cooking the eels thoroughly in the sauce. Eel must be cooked through to be safe and tender. Eel is fatty and dense, so it needs enough time in the simmering sauce to become fully cooked without falling apart.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, garlic, butter, tomato, coconut, milk, flour):

  1. Cuminfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, garlic, butter, tomato, coconut, milk, flour. 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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