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To Stew Eels

A stew of eels simmered in beef gravy, port wine, anchovies, onions, horseradish, and Cayenne pepper, thickened with flour, cream, or butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,784 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

To Stew Eels

Ingredients

Directions

Stew the eels

  1. In a saucepan, combine the beef gravy, port wine, anchovies, onions, horseradish, and Cayenne pepper.

  2. Add the eels to the cold sauce and let them stew for 1 hour.

Thicken the sauce

  1. Skim off the fat and remove a little gravy to cool.

  2. Stir in flour, cream, or butter to thicken the cooled gravy.

  3. Bring the gravy to a boil before adding the eels back in and let it boil together.

Serve

  1. Serve garnished with lemon and horseradish.

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 + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  3. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  4. Horseradish + flourtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together743 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Horseradish + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,646 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Eels
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender through slow stewing in the sauce.
Beef gravy
Forms the savory, rich liquid base that carries the whole dish.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and fruity depth that balances the savory gravy.
Anchovies
Contribute deep savory flavor that blends into the sauce and disappears as a fishy note.
Onions
Release sweetness and aroma into the sauce as they stew.
Flour, cream, or butter
Thickens the gravy so it coats the eels instead of running thin.

The step that matters

Thickening the cooled gravy. Starch thickens only when heated, and stirring it into gravy that is cooled first helps it disperse without lumps. Bringing the gravy to a boil then activates the thickening so the sauce sets to a coating consistency.

Swap the horseradish

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Horseradishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, port wine, onion, pepper, 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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