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Stewed Conger Eel with Curry Sauce

A stew of conger eel simmered in a curry-flavored sauce with onions, butter, flour, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley 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 ↓

Stewed Conger Eel with Curry Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Remove the skin from the Conger Eel and cut it into fillets.

  2. Soak the fillets in salted vinegar for 1 hour, then rinse and dry them.

Make the curry sauce

  1. Chop the onion and brown it in butter.

  2. Add the fish pieces to the pan and toss for a few minutes.

  3. Season with salt and pepper, then sprinkle with flour and curry powder, cooking for a few more minutes.

  4. Add enough water and white wine to cover the fish, along with spices and parsley, and bring to a boil.

  5. Reduce heat and let it simmer gently until the fish is cooked through.

  6. Remove the parsley, take out the fish, and thicken the sauce with the egg yolks.

  7. Strain the sauce over the fish 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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Vinegar + white winetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Conger eel
Provides the firm, mild white flesh that is the main component of the dish.
Onion
Browned in butter to add savoury sweetness and depth to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid together with the curry powder's fat, giving the sauce body.
Curry powder
Adds warm spice aroma and flavour to the sauce.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the finished sauce as they set gently with heat.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce with egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken when gently heated but can scramble and curdle if the sauce boils. Keep the sauce below a simmer and stir while adding them, then strain for a smooth result.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, butter, pepper, flour, white wine, parsley, egg. 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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