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Stewed Eels

A stew of eels simmered with stock, herbs, onions, spices, and finished with butter, flour, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Stewed Eels

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the eels into pieces about 2 inches long.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the eels, stock, herbs, onions, peppercorns, mace, and a little lemon juice.

Poach the eels

  1. Bring to a boil, skim off any foam, and simmer for about 30 minutes until the eels are cooked.

  2. Remove the eels and keep them warm.

Make the sauce

  1. In another saucepan, mix the butter and flour and cook gently without browning.

  2. Add the stock from the first saucepan to the butter and flour mixture, stirring until boiling.

  3. Boil for about 4 minutes, then season with salt and cayenne.

  4. Stir in the cream.

Serve

  1. Place the eels in the center of a hot dish and pour the sauce over them, coating each piece thoroughly.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

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, which becomes tender when gently simmered in the stock.
Butter
Forms the fat base of the roux, carrying flavour and giving the sauce a smooth richness.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter and combined with the hot stock.
White stock
Cooks the eels and provides the liquid that becomes the body of the sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and softens the sauce's flavour at the end of cooking.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the rich, mild sauce.

The step that matters

Cook the roux without browning. Cooking butter and flour gently lets the starch swell and thicken smoothly without developing a brown, toasted flavour that would change the sauce's colour and taste.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, onion, lemon, 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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