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Excellent Collared Eels

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Excellent Collared Eels

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Select the largest eels and clean them well. Optionally, skin them.

  2. Bone the eels and lay them flat with the inside facing up.

  3. Mix parsley, shallot, thyme, marjoram, savory, pepper, mace, cloves, nutmeg, allspice, mushroom powder, lemon peel, and salt. Rub this mixture inside the eels.

  4. Roll the eels tightly and bind them with tape.

  5. Boil the eel heads and bones in salted water with lemon peel, bay leaves, and pepper.

  6. Place the collars in the strained broth, add vinegar, and simmer until cooked.

  7. Remove the collars, skim the fat from the broth, and reduce it to a strong jelly.

  8. Pour the jelly over the cold collars after removing the tape, or serve them with chopped jelly around them.

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 + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Parsley + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

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

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, shallot, thyme, marjoram, pepper, clove, nutmeg):

  1. Winter savoryfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, shallot, thyme, marjoram, pepper, clove, nutmeg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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