Name: Fried Eels
Ingredients: small eels or large eels (cut into 2-inch pieces); 1 egg; bread crumbs; oil for frying

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 ↓

Fried Eels

Ingredients

small eels or large eels (cut into 2-inch pieces)
1 egg
bread crumbs
oil for frying

Directions

Prepare

If using small eels, curl them; if large, cut into 2-inch pieces.
Dip the eels in beaten egg.
Coat the eels with bread crumbs.

Fry and serve

Heat oil in a pan.
Fry the eels until golden brown.
Serve hot.

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.

Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked 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

Eels: Provide the main protein, which firms and turns tender-flaky when fried.
Egg: Binds the bread crumbs to the eels so the coating stays on during frying.
Bread crumbs: Form a crisp, golden coating that browns in hot oil.

“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.