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Anguille Rotie. — Roasted Eel

A roasted eel stuffed with a forcemeat of breadcrumbs, bacon, parsley, sage, spices, and egg yolk, then wrapped and cooked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,445 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Anguille Rotie. — Roasted Eel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eel

  1. Skin the eel and lay it flat.

  2. Mix breadcrumbs, bacon, parsley, sage, pepper, salt, mace, and egg yolk to make the forcemeat.

  3. Spread the forcemeat on the inner side of the eel.

  4. Roll the eel tightly from the tail, securing it with twine and small skewers.

Roast and finish

  1. Butter the skin and place it over the eel.

  2. Cook the eel over a fire until nearly done, then remove the skin.

  3. Brush the eel with egg yolk and sprinkle with breadcrumbs 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.

  1. Parsley + sagetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,445 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  3. Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Sage + macetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together519 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Silver eel
Forms the main body of the dish, rolled around the stuffing and cooked through.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb moisture in the forcemeat and form a crisp coating on the outside.
Bacon fat
Adds richness and moisture to the forcemeat so it stays tender during cooking.
Egg yolk
Binds the forcemeat together and helps the final brushed coating brown.
Butter
Adds fat to the skin, promoting browning and a golden surface.

The step that matters

Cook the eel over a fire until nearly done, then remove the skin. Eel is fatty and delicate, so cooking it until nearly done before removing the skin helps keep it moist while the surface still has time to develop colour. Removing the skin too early can dry the flesh, while leaving it on too long can prevent the outside from crisping.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, sage, pepper, egg, 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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