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Soused or Marinaded Eels

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Rosemary and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 113 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Soused or Marinaded Eels

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Clean the eels thoroughly, removing sand and impurities, without skinning them.

  2. Cut the eels into pieces about 4 to 5 inches long.

  3. Fry the eel pieces in lard until cooked.

  4. In a separate pot, boil equal parts vinegar and water with salt, bay leaves, rosemary, ginger, capsicum, and any other spices you prefer.

  5. Adjust the mixture with boiling water to balance the saltiness and acidity.

  6. Submerge the fried eel pieces in the marinade and let them cool 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. Rosemary + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together113 recipes

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

  2. Ginger + capsicumtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,890 recipes

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

  3. Rosemary + capsicumtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together580 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Vinegar + capsicumtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,160 recipes

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

  5. Vinegar + rosemarytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together643 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, rosemary, capsicum):

  1. Basilfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Oreganofits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, rosemary, capsicum. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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