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To Spitchcock Eels

A grilled eel dish seasoned with egg, parsley, salt, pepper, mace, and suet, served with anchovy and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

To Spitchcock Eels

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the eels into 3‑inch pieces, keeping the skin on.

  2. Clean and dry the pieces with a cloth.

  3. Wet the eels with egg and season with parsley, salt, pepper, and mace.

Grill and serve

  1. Rub a gridiron with suet and grill the eels until they are a fine color.

  2. Serve with anchovy and butter.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Egg + anchovytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,330 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Anchovy + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Parsley + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,702 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Parsley + macetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,268 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Eels
The main protein; their skin-on pieces hold together and brown on the grill.
Egg
Binds the seasoning to the eel pieces so it clings during cooking.
Suet
Rendered fat that greases the gridiron and helps keep the eels from sticking.
Parsley
Adds fresh, herbal aroma to the eels.

The step that matters

Grilling until a fine color. Eel skin and fat can scorch before the flesh is cooked through. Moderate heat lets the fat render and the surface brown evenly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, parsley, pepper, anchovy, butter):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, parsley, pepper, anchovy, butter. 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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