Skip to main content
Main

Stewed Eels a LA Francaise

Eels are gently cooked in a seasoned liquid, then served in a flour-thickened sauce enriched with beaten egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Thyme and parsley 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 ↓

Stewed Eels a LA Francaise

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the eels

  1. In a saucepan, combine eels, parsley, thyme, onion, butter, lemon juice, salt, pepper, and boiling water.

  2. Cook gently until the eels are tender.

  3. Remove the eels with a perforated spoon and keep warm.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Strain the cooking liquid, thicken it with flour, and boil for 3 minutes.

  2. Beat the eggs and stir them into the sauce quickly, then remove from heat before they curdle.

  3. Pour the sauce over the eels and serve.

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

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

  5. Lemon + peppertop 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

Eels
Provide the main protein, which becomes tender when gently simmered in the liquid.
Eggs
Thicken and enrich the sauce, giving it a smooth, creamy body when gently heated.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, rounding out the flavour and mouthfeel of the sauce.
Flour (in the method)
Thickens the strained cooking liquid into a sauce that coats the eels.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and balances its fat.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs to the sauce. Egg proteins set when heated, so if the sauce gets too hot after the eggs go in, they curdle and the sauce turns grainy. Stirring quickly and removing the pan from heat keeps it smooth.

Swap the onion

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

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

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

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes