Name: To Boil Eels
Ingredients: Eels; Salt; Water; Parsley; Butter; Horseradish

Why it works: Parsley and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 562 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

To Boil Eels

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eels by drying and flouring them.
Boil the eels in salted water with a generous amount of parsley for about 1 hour or until tender.
Serve with melted butter and garnish with scraped horseradish.

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.

Parsley + horseradishtop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together562 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together28,563 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Butter + horseradishtop 28% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together947 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).