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Collared Eel

A preserved eel seasoned with spices, boiled in gravy, then glazed and served with jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Marjoram and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 507 recipes. Both carry 2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Collared Eel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eel

  1. Cut off the head of the eel, split it, and remove the bone without skinning it.

  2. Season the eel with mixed spices, parsley, marjoram, sage, and sprinkle with dry isinglass.

  3. Roll the eel tightly in a cloth and bind it securely with strong tape.

Cook and set

  1. Boil the eel in good gravy with vinegar, peppercorns, onions, bay leaves, mace, and allspice until tender.

  2. Remove the eel, retie it in the cloth, and let it cool.

Glaze and serve

  1. Glaze the eel and serve whole or sliced, garnished with jelly and barberries.

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. Marjoram + sagetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together507 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Parsley + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Marjoram + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together342 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Sage + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together331 recipes

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

  5. Parsley + sagetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,445 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eels
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked until tender and then served whole or sliced.
Dry isinglass
Gelatinous fish-derived binder that helps the cooled dish set firmly and hold its shape.
Good gravy
Cooking liquid that moistens the eel as it simmers and later forms the base for the jelly.

The step that matters

Rolling and binding the eel. If the eel is not rolled tightly and bound securely, it can loosen and unravel during boiling, producing an uneven shape and exposing the flesh to the liquid unevenly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, marjoram, sage, vinegar, onion, allspice):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, marjoram, sage, vinegar, onion, allspice. 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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