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Spitchcocked Eels

A fried eel dish coated in butter, lemon, flour, breadcrumbs, and seasoned with parsley, sago, mace, pepper, and salt.

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

Spitchcocked Eels

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the eels by cutting them into 3-4 inch pieces.

  2. Mix parsley, sago, mace, pepper, and salt in a bowl.

  3. Coat the eel pieces with warmed butter and lemon juice, or let them soak for 2-3 minutes.

  4. Sprinkle the seasoning mixture over the eel pieces.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip each piece in flour and then in breadcrumbs.

  2. Fry the coated eel pieces in boiling fat until golden brown, about 20 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve on a round dish with sauce piquante in the center.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  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

Eels
Form the main body of the dish, cooking to a firm, flaky texture when fried.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the eel pieces and helps the coating brown.
Flour
Forms a dry first coating that helps the breadcrumbs adhere and promotes browning.
Bread crumbs
Create a crisp, golden outer crust when fried.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and fried coating.

The step that matters

Frying the coated eel pieces. Fat must be fully boiling before the eel goes in. Hot fat sets the breadcrumb coating quickly and browns it, while cooler fat lets the coating soak up oil and turn greasy and soggy.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, pepper, butter, lemon, flour, bread, 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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