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Eels Roasted

Roasted eel with butter, carrots, spices, parsley, chives, onions, stock, and white wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 Roasted

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eel

  1. Skin the eel and clean it thoroughly.

  2. Broil the eel over a hot fire, turning it in a ring.

  3. Insert wooden or silver skewers into the eel.

Make the sauce base

  1. Combine butter, carrots, spices, parsley, chives, onions, stock, and white wine in a stewpan; bring to a boil.

Roast and serve

  1. When the eel is half cooked, place it on a spit and wrap it in buttered paper.

  2. Roast the wrapped eel over a clear fire until fully cooked, removing the paper a few minutes before serving to brown it.

  3. Serve with sauce ravigotte.

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 + chivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Chive + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,907 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  5. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 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
Is the main protein, cooked by broiling and then roasting until firm and flaky.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps carry flavour through the sauce and wrapping.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the sauce, balancing the richness of the butter.
Stock
Supplies savoury body to the sauce base.
Onions
Contribute aromatic sweetness and depth to the sauce base.

The step that matters

Removing the paper to brown the eel. The buttered paper keeps the eel moist while it finishes cooking. Browning needs direct heat on the exposed surface, so the paper must come off only a few minutes before serving, or the skin will stay pale and the fish may steam.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, parsley, chive, onion, white wine):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, parsley, chive, onion, white wine. 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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