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Stewed Eels

A stew of eels simmered with cider, port wine, onion, horseradish, mushrooms, anchovy sauce, bay leaf, brown sauce, lemon juice, and corn flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Anchovy and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,057 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Stewed Eels

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eels

  1. Skin, clean, and wash the eels.

  2. Dry them thoroughly with a cloth.

  3. Cut the eels into 2-inch pieces and flour them.

Stew

  1. In a stewpan, combine the eels, cider or hock, port wine, onion, horseradish, mushrooms, anchovy sauce, and bay leaf.

  2. Let the mixture simmer for 30 minutes.

  3. Remove the eels, onion, and horseradish from the stewpan.

Finish the sauce and serve

  1. Add the brown sauce, lemon juice, and coarse sea salt to the remaining liquid.

  2. Thicken the sauce with the corn flour mixed well.

  3. Bring the sauce to a boil.

  4. Return the eels to the sauce.

  5. Keep warm on the side of the fire until served.

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. Anchovy + saucetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Cider + port winetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together41 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl pentanoate (yeast, fruit).

  3. Onion + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Horseradish + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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 as they simmer in the liquid.
Corn flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a glossy sauce when mixed in and brought to a boil.
Port wine
Adds depth, sweetness and colour to the sauce as it simmers with the eels.
Brown sauce
Adds savoury richness and body to the finished sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, savoury sauce.

The step that matters

Thicken the sauce with the corn flour mixed well. Corn flour clumps into lumps if added undispersed; mixing it smooth in cold liquid first lets the starch swell evenly, and the sauce must then boil to fully thicken.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cider, port wine, onion, horseradish, mushroom, anchovy, sauce):

  1. Plumfits better
  2. Applefits better
  3. Grapefits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cider, port wine, onion, horseradish, mushroom, anchovy, sauce. 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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