Skip to main content
Main

Eels a LA Tartare

Fried eels served around a fish salad.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Eels a LA Tartare

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare a fish salad and place it in the center of a serving dish.

  2. Cut the eels into pieces about 3 inches long and trim them nicely.

Bread the eels

  1. Dust the eels with flour.

  2. Coat the eels with the egg yolk.

  3. Cover the eels with breadcrumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the eels in hot lard until golden brown, similar to frying soles.

  2. Arrange the fried eels around the fish salad.

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. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Egg + fishtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,782 recipes

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

  3. Flour + fishtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
Form the main body of the dish, cooked by frying until tender and golden.
Egg yolk
Binds the flour and breadcrumbs so the coating adheres to the eels during frying.
Breadcrumbs
Form a crisp, golden outer crust when fried.
Flour
Dries the surface of the eels so the egg yolk adheres evenly.
Lard
Conducts heat for frying, browning the coating and adding richness.

The step that matters

Fry the eels in hot lard until golden brown. If the lard is not hot enough, the breadcrumb coating absorbs fat and turns greasy before it browns. Hot fat sets and crisps the crust quickly, keeping the inside moist.

“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.

You might also like

Fried FishFried Fish120 recipesFish CroquettesFish Croquettes81 recipesScalloped CodScalloped Cod69 recipesBroiled FishBroiled Fish68 recipes