Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓
Eel Pie
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare the eels
Skin, clean, wash, and trim the eels. Cut off the heads and tails, then divide the bodies into 2 to 3-inch pieces.
Sprinkle the eel pieces with pepper and coarse sea salt. Place them in a shallow dish and pour in ½ cup of cold water.
Assemble and bake
Cover the dish with meat-pie paste. Brush the top with egg yolk and decorate as desired.
Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 1 hour.
While the pie bakes, stew the skins, fins, heads, and tails of the eels in ½ pint of water for about 45 minutes.
Make the sauce and finish
Strain the liquid through a sieve, then add 1 tablespoon of lemon juice and season with pepper and coarse sea salt.
Thicken the mixture with 1 teaspoon of flour, heat it, and pour it into the pie through the hole in the crust.
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.
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Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together27,047 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together30,404 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together44,316 recipes
Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).
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Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together50,459 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Eels
- Provide the main filling, whose flesh becomes tender and rich during baking and stewing.
- Meat-pie paste
- Forms the crust that seals in moisture and browns in the oven.
- Egg yolk
- Brushed on the crust, it promotes a glossy, golden browning.
- Flour
- Thickens the strained stewing liquid so it becomes a silky sauce.
- Lemon juice
- Adds acidity that brightens the rich flavour of the eels and stock.
The step that matters
Thickening the stewing liquid. Flour must be fully incorporated and the liquid heated so the starch swells and thickens it evenly. Adding flour to cold liquid or skipping heating leaves lumps and a thin sauce.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, meat, egg, flour):
- Lemonthe original
- Raisinfits about as well
- Limefits less well
- Avocadofits less well
Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, meat, egg, flour. 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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