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Eel Sauce

A savory sauce made from eels, ham, stock, onion, carrot, bay leaf, peppercorns, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,555 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Eel Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the eels and cut them into short lengths.

  2. Cut the ham into small pieces.

Make the sauce

  1. In a stewpan, combine the eels, ham, stock, onion, carrot, bay leaf, and peppercorns.

  2. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

  3. Simmer gently for about 30 to 40 minutes.

  4. Strain the sauce and use as required.

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. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  2. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Ham + oniontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,159 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  5. Ham + carrottop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Eels
Provide the main flavour and body of the sauce as they simmer.
Stock
Forms the liquid base that carries and extracts flavour from the other ingredients.
Ham
Adds savoury, salty depth to the sauce.
Onion
Contributes aromatic sweetness and savour as it softens in the liquid.

The step that matters

Simmer gently. Gentle simmering extracts flavour steadily without breaking the eels apart or making the sauce cloudy. A hard boil can toughen the fish and muddy the liquid.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, carrot, 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.

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