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Stewed Eels

A stew of silver eel cooked in a butter‑flour roux with milk or water, parsley, lemon, cayenne, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Stewed Eels

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the eel

  1. Cut the head off the eel and wash it well.

  2. Cut the eel into pieces about 2 inches long.

Make the stew

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Stir in the flour to make a roux, cooking for 1-2 minutes.

  3. Gradually add the milk or water, stirring constantly until smooth.

  4. Add the eel pieces, parsley, lemon juice, cayenne pepper, and salt.

  5. Simmer for 20-25 minutes until the eel is cooked through.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

Silver eel
Forms the main body of the stew and becomes tender as it simmers.
Butter
Carries the flavour and gives richness to the roux.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth sauce when cooked with the butter.
Milk or water
Forms the liquid base that the roux thickens into a stew sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the liquid to the roux. Adding the milk or water gradually while stirring constantly keeps the starch dispersed, so the sauce becomes smooth instead of lumpy.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Cardamomfits about as well
  3. Cinnamonfits about as well
  4. Thymefits less well

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