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Eels a LA Poulette

Eels à la Poulette is a dish of eels simmered in butter, turned sauce, egg yolks, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Eels a LA Poulette

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook

  1. Skin the eels and cut them into 2–3 inch pieces.

  2. Place them in a buttered stewpan large enough to hold them all on the bottom.

  3. Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, and chopped parsley.

  4. Cover with turned sauce and bring to a boil.

  5. Reduce heat and simmer gently until cooked through, skimming as needed.

Finish and serve

  1. Thicken with 4–5 egg yolks and stir in a walnut‑sized piece of butter and a little lemon juice.

  2. Dish and 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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 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 + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Eggs
Egg yolks thicken the sauce into a smooth, rich coating.
Butter
Melted into the sauce, it adds richness and a glossy finish.
Lemon juice
Adds a bright acidity that balances the richness of the sauce.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce with egg yolks. Egg yolks set when heated, so the sauce must be kept below a boil while stirring in the yolks. If it gets too hot, the yolks scramble and the sauce turns grainy instead of smooth and velvety.

“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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