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White Eel Soup

A broth made from eels, vegetables, and seasonings, finished with anchovy essence and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsnip and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 561 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

White Eel Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eels

  1. Skin and remove the heads and tails from the eels.

Make the stock

  1. Place the eels in a stewpan with cold water, salt, peppercorns, mace, whole onion, oyster beards, lemon peel, parsnip, celery heart, mushrooms, and chicken feet.

  2. Stew for 1 hour until simmering.

  3. Strain the soup.

Finish and serve

  1. Cut the eel bodies into 3-inch pieces and add them to the strained soup.

  2. Stew the eel pieces for another 30 minutes.

  3. Keep the eel pieces hot.

  4. Remove excess oil from the soup.

  5. Add essence of anchovies, Madeira, sherry, or port, garlic vinegar, and the remaining oysters to the tureen.

  6. Pour the soup into the tureen.

  7. Serve.

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. Parsnip + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together561 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Lemon + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

  3. Mushroom + chickentop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).

  4. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Onion + chickentop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Eels
Provide the main body of the soup and its rich, savoury flesh.
Oysters
Add a briny, savoury flavour to the soup.
Madeira, sherry, or port
Adds sweetness and depth as a fortified wine.
Essence of anchovies
Adds a salty, savoury umami depth to the broth.

The step that matters

Remove excess oil from the soup. Eels are fatty, and the fat rises to the surface of the stock. Skimming it off keeps the soup clear and stops it tasting greasy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, oyster, lemon, parsnip, celery, mushroom, chicken):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, oyster, lemon, parsnip, celery, mushroom, chicken. 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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