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To Collar Eels

Eel seasoned with spices, boiled, and served sliced.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

To Collar Eels

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eel

  1. Scour the eel well with coarse sea salt and wipe it clean.

  2. Cut the eel down the back and remove the bone; cut off the head and tail.

  3. Spread the egg yolk over the eel.

  4. Mix cloves, mace, nutmeg, pepper, salt, parsley, and sweet herbs; sprinkle over the eel.

  5. Roll the eel tightly and tie it in cloth.

Boil and cool

  1. In a pot, add enough water to boil the eel, along with the onion, cloves, mace, and bay leaves.

  2. Boil the eel for 2 hours if large, or less if smaller.

  3. Remove the eel from the pot and let it cool.

Serve

  1. Take the eel out of the cloth and cut it into slices or serve whole with raw parsley.

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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Eel
Forms the main body of the dish, which is rolled, boiled and then sliced or served whole.
Egg yolk
Spread over the eel to bind the seasoning mixture to the flesh as it rolls.
Nutmeg
Adds warm, aromatic flavour to the spiced coating on the eel.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic flavour to the spice coating and the boiling liquor.

The step that matters

Rolling and tying the eel tightly. A tight roll keeps the seasoned layers in contact with the flesh and gives an even, compact shape. Loose rolling lets the filling fall apart and the slices come out uneven during boiling and cooling.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, clove, mace, nutmeg, pepper, parsley, vinegar):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, clove, mace, nutmeg, pepper, parsley, vinegar. 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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