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Stewed Eels

Stewed eels simmered with onions, butter, stock, bouquet garni, lemon peel, flour, pepper, and sea salt, served with toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Stewed Eels

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eels

  1. Skin and cut the eels into 2-inch pieces.

  2. Wash the eels in salt and water, then dry with a cloth.

Make the stew

  1. In a 3-pint stew pan, melt 1½ oz of butter and add 1 finely shredded onion.

  2. Stir in a little flour, pepper, and coarse sea salt.

  3. Add the eel pieces and fry until nicely colored, stirring constantly.

  4. Pour in ½ pint of good stock, and flavor with the bouquet garni and a little lemon peel.

  5. Simmer gently until the eels are cooked through.

Serve

  1. Remove the eels and arrange them on a dish.

  2. Strain the sauce over the eels and serve with toasted bread cut into triangles around the dish.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Eels
Main protein; frying and simmering firm the flesh and turn it tender and flaky.
Butter
Fat that carries the onion and browns the eel pieces, adding richness to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth sauce as it cooks with the butter and onion.
Stock
Liquid base of the sauce, carrying flavor and forming the body of the stew.
Onions
Softens and sweetens in the butter, adding aroma and depth to the sauce.

The step that matters

Frying the eels until nicely colored. Browning the eel pieces in butter builds flavor through the Maillard reaction. Stirring constantly prevents the flour and onion from scorching on the pan base, which would make the sauce taste bitter.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, butter, flour, pepper):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, butter, flour, pepper. 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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