Skip to main content
Main

Eels, Stewed

A stew of eels simmered with butter, onion, herbs, mace, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Eels, Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Start the eels

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan.

  2. Add the eels to the butter.

  3. Simmer for a few minutes.

  4. Add the water, onion, herbs, mace, salt, and pepper.

  5. Simmer until the eels are tender but not broken.

Thicken and finish

  1. Carefully dish the eels.

  2. Keep the eels hot.

  3. Mix the flour with a little water to form a batter.

  4. Stir the batter into the soup.

  5. Bring the soup to a boil.

  6. Add the cream.

  7. Pour the cream over the eels.

  8. 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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  3. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  4. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eels
Provide the main body of the dish, becoming tender through slow simmering.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and starts the eels cooking gently in the pan.
Flour
Mixed into a batter and stirred into the liquid to thicken the soup.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, mellow texture to the finished soup.
Onion
Contributes savory aroma and sweetness as it cooks into the stewing liquid.

The step that matters

Simmer until the eels are tender but not broken. Gentle simmering softens the flesh slowly; a hard boil can toughen the protein and break the delicate pieces apart, so keep the liquid barely bubbling.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, parsley, thyme, pepper, 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes