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Stewed Eels

Stewed eels simmered with onion, mace, lemon, cloves, stock, and optional cream and port wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Stewed Eels

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eels

  1. Wash and skin the eels.

  2. Cut the eels into 2 to 3-inch pieces.

  3. Dredge the eel pieces with flour, pepper, and coarse sea salt.

Make the gravy

  1. Bring the stock to a boil.

  2. Add the eel, onion stuffed with cloves, mace, and a piece of lemon peel to the stock.

  3. Simmer for 30 minutes or more.

  4. Remove the eel from the pan.

  5. Strain the gravy.

  6. Return the gravy to the pan.

  7. Thicken the gravy with flour.

  8. Boil the gravy for 2 to 3 minutes.

  9. Stir in a little cream and port wine if desired.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the lemon juice and the eel back to the pan.

  2. Warm through thoroughly.

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

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

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Lemon + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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 firms and flakes as it is gently simmered.
Flour
Dredges the eel and thickens the stock into a gravy.
Stock
Forms the liquid base that cooks the eel and becomes the gravy.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the gravy when stirred in.
Port wine
Adds depth and a little sweetness to the gravy.

The step that matters

Simmer the eel gently. Vigorous boiling toughens and breaks up delicate eel flesh, so keep the stock at a gentle simmer while the eel cooks.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, lemon, clove, flour, pepper, cream, port wine):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, lemon, clove, flour, pepper, cream, port wine. 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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