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Stewed Eels

A stew of eels cooked with stock, port wine, mushroom ketchup, onions, herbs, mace, peppers, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Stewed Eels

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sauce

  1. Chop the onion and fry it until brown with the herbs and flour in the butter.

  2. Stir in the peppers, mace, salt, and stock.

Stew the eel

  1. Cut the eel into pieces and add it to the pot.

  2. Let it stew slowly for about 30 minutes.

  3. Remove the eel with a slotted spoon and keep it warm in the oven.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the ketchup and port wine to the sauce.

  2. Let it boil quickly.

  3. Strain the sauce over the eel and serve.

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. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Mushroom + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

  3. Port wine + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together570 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (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 becomes tender as they stew slowly in the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when fried in butter with the onion, giving it body.
Butter
Fat for frying the onion and herbs, carrying flavour into the sauce.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth to the sauce, rounding its flavour when boiled down.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds savoury, umami depth to the sauce.
Onion
Browns in butter to build a sweet, savoury base for the sauce.

The step that matters

Let it boil quickly. A brief fast boil reduces and concentrates the sauce after the wine and ketchup go in. Boiling too long can make it thick or harsh, while too little leaves it thin and flat.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (port wine, mushroom, ketchup, onion, pepper, butter, flour):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against port wine, mushroom, ketchup, onion, pepper, butter, 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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