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Baked eel seasoned with mace, nutmeg, pepper, salt, and clarified butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Fish

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the eel

  1. Skin, clean, and dry the eel thoroughly with a cloth.

  2. Cut the eel into pieces about 4 inches long.

  3. Season the pieces with beaten mace, nutmeg, pepper, coarse sea salt, and fine salt-prunella.

Bake

  1. Place them in a pan and pour enough clarified butter over to cover them.

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 30 minutes, adjusting time based on the size of the eel pieces.

  3. Remove with a fork and drain on a coarse cloth.

  4. Remove the butter from the baking dish and set aside the gravy.

Pack and store

  1. Once cooled, season again with the same seasonings and pack closely in a pot.

  2. Melt the reserved butter and pour it over the eel pieces before storing.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  3. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Nutmeg + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 gently in butter until tender and flaky.
Clarified butter
Cooks the eel in fat and later coats the pieces, adding richness and moisture.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the eel and draws out flavour from the surface before packing.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against nutmeg, pepper, 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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