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Eels À LA Tartare

A French-style eel dish simmered in butter, wine, and herbs, finished with egg yolk and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Eels À LA Tartare

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the eels

  1. Skin and clean the eels, then cut off their heads.

  2. Tie the eels in a round shape.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the sliced carrots, onions, parsley, and bay leaf; fry until softened.

  3. Add the white wine and season with salt and pepper; cook until the sauce is done.

  4. Strain the sauce through a fine sieve and return it to the pan.

Stew, coat and bake

  1. Add the tied eels to the sauce; stew until cooked through.

  2. Moisten the eels with the sauce.

  3. Sprinkle the eels with bread crumbs.

  4. Moisten the eels again with the beaten egg yolks, seasoned with salt and pepper.

  5. Sprinkle the eels with bread crumbs a second time.

  6. Broil the eels over low heat or place them in the oven at 300°F (150°C) until golden brown.

  7. Serve the eels on a plate with the sauce à la tartare poured around them.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Eels
Main protein; they are stewed until cooked through and then browned.
Butter
Fat that softens the vegetables and carries their flavour into the sauce.
Egg yolks
Beaten yolks brushed over the eels, helping the coating set and brown.
Bread crumbs
Coating that forms a crisp, golden crust when broiled or baked.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the sauce as it cooks down.

The step that matters

Browning the coated eels. The bread crumbs and egg yolks need enough heat to turn golden without drying the fish. Low, steady heat lets the crust brown while the eels stay moist, so watch them closely under the broiler or in the oven.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, carrot, parsley, white wine, pepper, bread, egg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, carrot, parsley, white wine, pepper, bread, egg. 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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