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Eels to Fricassee

A stew of eels cooked with butter, onions, wine, stock, spices, and finished with egg yolks and orange juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Eels to Fricassee

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eels

  1. Skin and notch the eels from end to end, then cut them into 4 or 5 pieces.

  2. Soak the pieces in spring water for 30 minutes, then dry them with a cloth.

Make the fricassee

  1. In a pan, melt fresh butter and add the eels, onions, and chopped parsley.

  2. Shake the pan over heat for a few minutes, then add white wine and stock, along with pepper, salt, and mace.

  3. Stew for about 30 minutes, then stir in egg yolks, nutmeg, and parsley.

  4. Let it simmer for 4 to 5 minutes, then squeeze in the juice of the Seville orange.

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

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

  2. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  5. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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 becomes tender and flaky after stewing.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce into a creamy, rich liaison as they gently cook.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour when the eels are first cooked.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma that balance the richness of the sauce.
Stock
Forms the savoury liquid in which the eels stew.
Seville orange juice
Adds bright acidity that cuts through the richness of the egg and butter.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat; if the sauce boils after they go in, they can scramble and turn grainy. Keep the heat low and the liquid just below a simmer while stirring.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, onion, parsley, white wine, pepper, egg, nutmeg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, parsley, white wine, pepper, egg, nutmeg. 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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