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To Broil Eels

Broiled eels stuffed with seasoned eel flesh, rolled, sewn, and served with melted butter, anchovy, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

To Broil Eels

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eel

  1. Skin the eel and clean it.

  2. Open the belly and cut the eel into four pieces.

  3. Remove the flesh from the tail end and beat it in a mortar.

Make the filling

  1. Season the beaten flesh with mace, nutmeg, pepper, salt, parsley, thyme, lemon peel, and bread crumbs.

  2. Mix the seasoned flesh with the egg yolk.

  3. Roll the mixture up.

Wrap, broil and serve

  1. Fill three pieces of the eel's belly with the mixture.

  2. Wrap the filled pieces in the eel's skin.

  3. Sew the wrapped pieces up.

  4. Broil the wrapped eel pieces well.

  5. Serve with melted butter, an anchovy, and lemon juice.

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  3. Thyme + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eel
Provides the main flesh, which is beaten and mixed into the filling and wrapped in its own skin.
Bread crumbs
Absorbs moisture and helps bind the seasoned eel flesh into a filling that holds its shape.
Egg yolk
Binds the seasoned flesh together and adds richness to the filling.
Butter
Adds fat and moisture, keeping the wrapped eel juicy as it broils and browning its surface.

The step that matters

Broil the wrapped eel pieces well. The eel must be cooked through so the flesh sets and the filling firms up. Because the pieces are wrapped in skin, the heat must reach the centre, and basting with butter helps keep the surface from drying out.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Winter savoryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against nutmeg, pepper, parsley, thyme, lemon, bread, 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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