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Eels, Baked

A baked eel filled with shrimp force‑meat, served with a sauce of browned flour, wine, fish stock, and shrimp.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Shrimp and meat work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 584 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Eels, Baked

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eel

  1. Fill the cleaned eel with Plain Shrimp Force‑meat and secure the eel.

  2. Place the eel in a round baking dish with hot butter.

  3. Cook gently, basting often, until done.

  4. Transfer the eel to a serving dish.

Make the sauce

  1. In the baking tin, add browned flour to the remaining butter.

  2. Stir in the light wine and fish stock or water.

  3. Bring to a boil and skim.

  4. Season.

  5. Add shrimp essence or small pieces of shelled shrimps.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce around the fish before serving.

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. Shrimp + meattop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together584 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Shrimp + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,931 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  3. Meat + fishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together479 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Butter + fishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Eel
Forms the main body of the dish and carries the flavour of the stuffing and sauce.
Plain shrimp force-meat
Stuffs the eel, adding moisture and a shellfish flavour as it cooks.
Butter
Enriches the cooking of the eel and gives the browned flour a rich, nutty base.
Browned flour
Thickens the sauce and adds colour and a toasted flavour.
Light wine
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the sauce.
Shrimp essence or shelled shrimps
Intensifies the shellfish flavour of the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the stock to the browned flour. Liquid added to hot browned flour must be stirred in steadily so the starch swells evenly without lumps. Boiling and skimming then smooths the sauce and removes impurities.

“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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