Name: Eel Pie
Ingredients: 1 lb eels; a little chopped parsley; 1 shallot, chopped; 1/4 teaspoon grated nutmeg; salt and pepper to taste; juice of 1 lemon; small quantity of forcemeat; 1/2 pint Bechamel sauce; puff pastry

Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Eel Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eels

Skin and wash the eels, then cut them into 2-inch pieces.

Assemble the pie

Line the bottom of a pie dish with forcemeat.
Place the eel pieces in the dish and sprinkle with parsley, shallot, nutmeg, salt, pepper, and lemon juice.
Cover with puff pastry.

Bake and serve

Bake for about 1 hour.
Heat the Bechamel sauce and pour it into the pie before serving.

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.

Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,737 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,062 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Eels: Form the main body of the pie, providing the rich, firm meat of the filling.
Puff pastry: Forms a flaky, golden crust that seals the filling while baking.
Bechamel sauce: Adds creamy moisture to the filling, softening the richness of the eels.
Forcemeat: Lines the dish with a seasoned meat layer that adds savoury body beneath the eels.

Swap the nutmeg

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

Tarragonfits better
Capersfits better
Thymefits better
Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, shallot, pepper, lemon, sauce. 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.