Skip to main content
Main

To Broil Eels

Broiled eels coated in beaten egg, bread crumbs, pepper, salt, parsley, served with a butter, lemon pickle, and catsup sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

To Broil Eels

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the eels and score them.

  2. Dip the eels into the beaten egg.

  3. Coat the eels with grated bread mixed with pepper, salt, and parsley.

  4. Curl the eels.

Broil and serve

  1. Broil the eels.

  2. Mix melted butter with lemon pickle and catsup to make the sauce.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eels
The main protein, which the coating and broiling are applied to.
Beaten egg
Binds the grated bread coating to the eels so it adheres during broiling.
Grated bread
Forms a crumb coating that crisps and browns under the broiler.
Melted butter
Adds fat and richness to the sauce.

The step that matters

Broil the eels. The coating can burn before the fish cooks through if heat is too intense or the eels sit too close to the broiler. Watching closely lets the crumbs brown while the flesh becomes opaque and tender.

“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.

More broiled eels recipes

with Sage 7 See all 16 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes