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Fried Eels

Fried eels marinated in vinegar, lemon, onion, salt, pepper, coated in flour, fried, served with parsley garnish and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Fried Eels

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Split the cleaned eels open and cut them into short pieces.

  2. Make a pickle by mixing vinegar, lemon juice, sliced onion, salt, and pepper.

  3. Place the eels in the pickle and let them marinate for 2 to 3 hours.

Fry and serve

  1. Coat the marinated eels in flour.

  2. Fry the eels in lard or clarified butter until golden brown.

  3. Serve the fried eels dry, garnished with fried parsley, and with plain butter on the side.

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

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

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

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

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eels
Provide the main body of the dish, cooking to a firm, flaky texture when fried.
Vinegar
Acidity in the pickle that seasons the eels and begins to firm the flesh.
Lemon juice
Adds bright acidity to the pickle, balancing the richness of the fried eels.
Flour
Forms a thin coating that browns in the hot fat and gives the eels a crisp exterior.
Lard or clarified butter
Frying fat that conducts heat for even browning and adds rich flavour.

The step that matters

Fry the eels in lard or clarified butter until golden brown. Fat must be hot enough to brown the flour coating quickly; if it is too cool, the coating absorbs fat and turns greasy instead of crisp.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, lemon, pepper, flour, butter, parsley, sauce):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, lemon, pepper, flour, butter, parsley, sauce. 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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