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Excellent Collared Eels

A dish of eels prepared with herbs, spices, and a reduced vinegar broth, served with a jelly.

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

Prepare the eels

  1. Clean and bone the eels, laying them flat with the inside facing up.

  2. Mix parsley, shallot, thyme, marjoram, savory, pepper, mace, cloves, nutmeg, allspice, mushroom powder, lemon peel, and salt.

  3. Rub this mixture inside the eels.

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

Make the broth and jelly

  1. Boil the heads and bones of the eels in salted water with lemon peel, bay leaves, and pepper.

  2. Add the collars to the strained broth with vinegar and simmer until cooked through.

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

Serve

  1. Pour the jelly over the collars when cold, or serve them with chopped jelly around them, garnished with parsley or lemon peel.

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

What each ingredient does

Eels
Provide the main body of the dish, with their flesh rolled and set in the jelly.
Heads and bones (in the method)
Release gelatin into the broth, which sets into the strong jelly.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the broth and the flavour of the jelly.
Mushroom powder
Adds savoury depth to the spice mixture rubbed inside the eels.

The step that matters

Reducing the broth to a strong jelly. The broth must be reduced enough and skimmed of fat so it sets firmly when cold. Too little reduction leaves a loose jelly that will not hold the collars together.

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.

“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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