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Eels, Stewed

A stew of eels cooked with butter, sweet herbs, onion, and stock, thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Eels, Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the eels into pieces and dry them.

  2. Melt the butter in a frying pan and brown the eels.

  3. Transfer the browned eels to a stewpan.

Stew

  1. Add the bunch of sweet herbs and the quartered onion.

  2. Season with pepper, salt, and spice if desired.

  3. Add enough stock or water to nearly cover the fish.

  4. Let it stew gently until cooked through.

  5. Thicken the sauce with flour as needed.

  6. Serve the eels with the sauce poured around them.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender as they stew.
Butter
Adds richness and helps brown the eels before stewing.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a body-rich sauce.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma to the stewing liquid.

The step that matters

Browning the eels in the butter. Browning creates savoury, roasted flavours through the Maillard reaction. Eels must be dried first, since surface moisture steams rather than browns them.

Swap the onion

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

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

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