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To Broil Eels

A broiled eel stuffed with seasoned flesh, rolled, sewn, and served with butter, anchovy, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

To Broil Eels

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Skin and clean the eel.

  2. Open the belly and cut it into four pieces.

  3. Remove the flesh from the tail end and beat it in a mortar.

Make the stuffing

  1. Season the flesh with beaten mace, grated nutmeg, pepper, coarse sea salt, parsley, thyme, lemon peel, and bread crumbs.

  2. Mix in the egg yolk and roll it up.

  3. Fill three pieces of the eel skin with the mixture and sew it up.

Broil and serve

  1. Broil the eel pieces well.

  2. Serve with melted butter, an anchovy, and lemon juice.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  3. Thyme + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Eel
Provides the main body of the dish, and its skin wraps the stuffing.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and bind the beaten flesh into a stuffing that holds its shape.
Egg yolk
Binds the stuffing together and adds richness to the mixture.
Butter
Adds fat and moisture, helping the eel brown and stay tender under the broiler.

The step that matters

Broil the eel pieces well. Eel is fatty and can dry out or stay pale if underdone, while overcooking toughens the flesh. Basting with butter helps the skin brown and keeps the stuffed pieces moist as the heat sets the egg yolk binder.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Winter savoryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against nutmeg, pepper, parsley, thyme, lemon, bread, butter. 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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