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Stewed Eels

A stew of eels cooked with butter, claret, lemon, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Stewed Eels

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Skin and cut the eels into 2-inch pieces.

  2. Wash the eels thoroughly.

Stew

  1. In a stewpan, melt the butter and fry the eels for 5-10 minutes.

  2. Add enough white stock or water to cover the eels and pour in the claret.

  3. Stew gently for 45 minutes.

  4. Squeeze in the lemon juice and season with salt and pepper.

  5. Thicken with a little cornflour and stir in the parsley.

  6. Let it simmer for 10 minutes and 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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

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

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Eels
Provide the main substance of the dish, becoming tender as they stew slowly.
Butter
Adds richness and helps brown the eels when first fried.
Claret
Adds acidity and wine flavour to the stewing liquid.
Cornflour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a light sauce.

The step that matters

Thicken with a little cornflour. Cornflour must be mixed smoothly into the liquid or stirred in gradually, since adding it in lumps leaves clumps. Starch thickens properly only when the liquid is simmering, so it should be simmering as it is added.

“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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