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Eel Soup

A soup made from eels simmered in stock with salt, pepper, herbs, cayenne, sugar, lemon juice, and salmon flakes, served with bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Eel Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eels

  1. Skin the eels and cut them into 2-inch lengths.

  2. Soak the eel pieces in a strong saltwater solution for 2-3 hours.

Make the soup

  1. In a stew pan, combine the eels with clear stock or broth.

  2. Season with pepper and salt, and add herbs, cayenne, sugar, and lemon juice to taste.

  3. Simmer until the eels are cooked through.

  4. Pass the soup through a large-holed colander.

  5. Add the reserved flakes of salmon and bring to a boil.

Serve

  1. Serve with bread, either in diced pieces or as rolls.

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

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

  2. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Salmon + breadtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together941 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Lemon + salmontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Eels
Provide the main protein and the rich, distinctive flavour of the soup.
Clear stock or broth
Forms the liquid base that carries the seasonings and cooks the eels.
Flakes of salmon
Adds extra fish flavour and body to the finished soup.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich fish flavour.

The step that matters

Simmer until the eels are cooked through. Eel must be fully cooked for food safety and tender texture; stopping early leaves it undercooked, while overcooking toughens the flesh and makes the soup cloudy and dry-tasting.

“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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