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Method of Roasting Eels

Roasted eels seasoned with nutmeg, pepper, salt, thyme, sage, lemon peel, and bread crumbs, served with melted butter and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,485 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Method of Roasting Eels

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Skin and wash the eels, then cut them into 3 to 5 pieces.

  2. Make a seasoning with nutmeg, pepper, salt, thyme, sage, lemon peel, and bread crumbs.

  3. Strew the seasoning on the eels.

  4. Skewer the eels for roasting.

Roast and serve

  1. Baste the eels continually while roasting until they crack and appear white at the bone.

  2. Serve with melted butter and lemon juice.

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. Thyme + sagetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,485 recipes

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

  2. Thyme + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

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

  3. Sage + lemontop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together887 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Nutmeg + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together642 recipes

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

  5. Nutmeg + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,907 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Large eels
Provide the main flesh that is roasted and served.
Bread crumbs
Absorb basting fat and help form a crisp, golden coating on the surface.
Melted butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the surface brown while basting.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, fatty flavour of the eel.

The step that matters

Basting while roasting. Basting the eels continually keeps the surface moist and fatty so it does not dry out before the flesh is cooked through. The fat also promotes browning, giving the crisp, cracked skin the recipe describes.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (nutmeg, thyme, sage, lemon, bread, butter):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against nutmeg, thyme, sage, lemon, bread, butter. 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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