Skip to main content
Main

Eel Soup

A savory soup made with eels, onions, butter, herbs, and thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Winter savory and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 780 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Eel Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Halve the onions and make cross cuts in them.

  2. Melt 2 ounces of butter in a stew pan and add the onions, stirring until lightly browned.

  3. Add the pieces of eel and cook for 5 minutes, shaking the pan occasionally.

  4. Pour in 3 quarts of boiling water and remove any scum that forms.

  5. Add the winter savory, lemon thyme, parsley, allspice, and black pepper.

Simmer and strain

  1. Cover and simmer gently for 2 hours, then strain and skim the soup.

Thicken and serve

  1. In a clean stew pan, melt 3 ounces of butter for thickening.

  2. Stir in enough flour to make a thick paste, then gradually add the strained soup.

  3. Let it simmer for 10 minutes, then pass it through a sieve.

  4. Serve the soup with fried fish pieces added about 10 minutes 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. Winter savory + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together780 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Thyme + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,077 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  5. Winter savory + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together287 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Eels
Give the soup its main body and rich, fish-based flavour as they cook down in the broth.
Onions
Browning in butter adds sweetness and savoury depth to the soup base.
Butter
Carries the browning of the onions and enriches the soup as a fat.
Flour
Thickens the strained soup into a smoother, more body-rich texture.
Winter savory
Adds a herbal, aromatic note that complements the eel and broth.

The step that matters

Thickening the soup with flour and butter. Flour must be cooked into the melted butter as a paste before the liquid is added; otherwise lumps form and the soup thickens unevenly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, winter savory, lemon, thyme, parsley, allspice, pepper):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, winter savory, lemon, thyme, parsley, allspice, pepper. 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.

More eel soup recipes

Conger 4 See all 77 →

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesFried FishFried Fish120 recipesFish CroquettesFish Croquettes81 recipesScalloped CodScalloped Cod69 recipes