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Eel Soup, Very Restorative

A soup made from eels, onion, mushrooms, water, spices, and egg yolks or cream, served with white toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 ↓

Eel Soup, Very Restorative

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eels

  1. Cut the eels into chunks without opening them and reserve the belly part for serving.

Make the soup

  1. Simmer the remaining eels with the onion and mushrooms in 1 quart of water for a long time.

  2. Remove the eels, let them cool, then mince and pound them with the cooked vegetables.

  3. Add mace, pepper, salt, and lemon zest, then rub through a fine sieve and mix without boiling.

  4. Incorporate the egg yolks or cream, then serve with white toast.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

  4. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Mushroom + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eels
Provide the main body of the soup and its rich, savory flavor.
Egg yolks or cream
Add richness and body, and thicken the soup slightly when mixed in gently.

The step that matters

Mix without boiling. Once egg yolks are added, boiling can curdle them and make the soup grainy. Keeping the soup below a boil keeps it smooth and creamy.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, mace, pepper, lemon, egg):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, mace, pepper, lemon, egg. 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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