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Eel Soup

A soup made from eels simmered with water, bread crust, mace, pepper, onion, sweet herbs, and optional carrot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,555 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Eel Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. In a pot, combine eels and water.

  2. Add the crust of bread, mace, whole pepper, onion, and sweet herbs.

  3. Cover and boil until half the liquid is reduced.

  4. If the soup is not rich enough, boil it longer to reduce the liquid.

  5. Optionally, add a piece of carrot to enhance the color.

  6. Strain the soup.

Serve

  1. Toast some bread, cutting it into small pieces.

  2. Place the toasted bread in a dish and pour the soup over it.

  3. Heat the dish over a stove for a minute.

  4. Serve hot.

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 + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  2. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Mace + carrottop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Bread + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,676 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eels
Give the soup its main flavor and body as they simmer in the water.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma to the broth as it cooks.
Bread for toasting
Soaks up the strained broth, giving the dish a soft, substantial texture.

The step that matters

Boiling until half the liquid is reduced. Reducing the liquid concentrates flavor and gives the broth body. Too little reduction leaves a thin soup, while boiling too hard can make the broth cloudy and the eels break apart.

Swap the carrot

The recipe marks carrot as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, mace, pepper, onion):

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Carrotthe original
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Tomatofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, mace, pepper, onion. 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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