Why it works: Pepper and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 50,459 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Eel Pie
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Skin the eels, remove their heads, tails, and fins, and clean out the guts.
Cut the eels into pieces and place them in a dish, seasoning with pepper and coarse sea salt.
To make the gravy, boil the heads, tails, and fins in a little water, seasoned with pepper and coarse sea salt.
Thicken the gravy with a little flour, strain it, and let it cool.
Pour the cooled gravy over the eels in the dish.
Cover the dish and bake for about 1 hour at 350°F (175°C).
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.
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Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together50,459 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
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