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To Stew Eels

A stew of eels simmered with water, parsley, pepper, and salt, thickened with flour and butter, served with toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 Stew Eels

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the eels

  1. Clean and skin the eels; cut off the heads, fins, and tails, and divide the bodies into 4-5 inch pieces.

Stew

  1. Place the pieces in a stewpan and cover with water, adding parsley, pepper, and salt. Boil for about 15 minutes.

  2. Move the pieces to one side of the pan and thicken the sauce with flour and butter kneaded together.

Serve

  1. Serve in a dish with toasted bread around the edges.

  2. For a richer dish, dip the eel pieces in beaten egg, coat with bread crumbs, and brown in a frying pan before stewing in seasoned beef gravy.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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
The main protein, which becomes tender and flaky as it simmers.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when kneaded with butter, giving it body.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and combines with flour to thicken the sauce.
Beaten egg
Helps bread crumbs adhere to the eel pieces for the richer version.
Bread crumbs
Form a golden coating that browns when fried in the richer version.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce with flour and butter. Kneaded flour and butter must be added to the simmering liquid in pieces, not dumped in whole, so the starch hydrates evenly and the sauce thickens smoothly without lumps.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Tarragonfits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, flour, butter, bread, egg, beef. 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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