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Eel Soup

A soup made with sliced eels, onion, butter, mace, herbs, peppercorns, flour, cream, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Eel Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the eels and cut them into thin slices.

Make the soup

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan.

  2. Add the sliced eels to the butter and let them simmer for a few minutes.

  3. Pour in the water.

  4. Add the sliced onion, herbs, mace, and seasoning to the pot.

  5. Simmer until the eels are tender, being careful not to break them.

Thicken and serve

  1. Remove the eels carefully from the pot.

  2. Mix the flour smoothly with the cream.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  4. Pour the sauce over the eels.

  5. Serve.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Onion + macetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

  5. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 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
Provide the main protein and flavour of the soup, becoming tender through gentle simmering.
Flour
Thickens the cream mixture into a smooth sauce that coats the eels.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the sauce, softening its flavour.
Butter
Adds fat and rich flavour as the base for the eels.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma to the broth.

The step that matters

Simmer until the eels are tender, being careful not to break them.. Eel flesh is delicate; gentle simmering cooks it through without boiling it hard, which would cause the slices to break apart and make the soup cloudy.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, flour, cream. 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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