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Another Way to Stew Eels

A stew of eels cooked with butter, herbs, onion, lemon, anchovy, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 887 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Another Way to Stew Eels

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the cleaned and skinned eels into pieces.

  2. Season the eels with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

Stew

  1. In a stew pan, melt the butter and add the sorrel, sage leaves, onion, lemon peel, and anchovy.

  2. Add the eels to the pan and pour in the water.

  3. Stew gently for 30 minutes, shaking the pan occasionally.

  4. Before serving, add grated nutmeg and the juice of half a lemon.

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

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

  2. Sage + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together642 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  5. Sorrel + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together89 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Eels
Form the main body of the stew, becoming tender as they gently simmer.
Sorrel
Adds a sharp, tangy green flavour that brightens the rich fish.
Butter
Carries the aromatics and adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the broth.
Anchovy
Melts into the stew, adding savoury depth without a distinctly fishy taste.
Onion
Softens and sweetens during cooking, forming an aromatic base for the stew.

The step that matters

Stew gently for 30 minutes. Gentle heat keeps the eel pieces tender and intact, while a hard boil would toughen the protein and break them apart.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, butter, sorrel, sage, lemon, anchovy, nutmeg):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Kalefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, sorrel, sage, lemon, anchovy, nutmeg. 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.

More eel stew recipes

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