Skip to main content
Main

Stewed Eels

A dish of eels stewed with salt, bay leaf, onion, parsley, lemon rind, stock, and seasoned sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and lemon 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 ↓

Stewed Eels

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eels

  1. To kill the eels, insert a skewer into the spinal marrow behind the head without cutting it off.

  2. Skin the eels by cutting around the neck and pulling the skin down with a cloth.

  3. Gut the eels carefully, avoiding the gall, and cut into 2‑inch pieces.

  4. Soak the pieces in strong saltwater for 1 hour.

  5. Dry the pieces, roll them in seasoned flour, and fry in dripping until lightly browned.

  6. Drain the fried eels until cool to remove excess oil.

Stew and make the sauce

  1. In a clean stew‑pan, combine the eels with bay leaf, onion, parsley, lemon rind, and stock.

  2. Simmer gently for 20–30 minutes, depending on thickness.

  3. Remove the eels and keep them warm.

  4. Strain the gravy, thicken with flour, and season with salt, cayenne, essence of anchovy, and lemon juice.

  5. Simmer the sauce for 10 minutes, adding red wine if desired.

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

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

  4. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Clove + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Eels
Main protein; firm, oily flesh that holds its shape during frying and stewing.
Flour
Coats the eels for browning and later thickens the gravy.
Dripping
Fat for frying, giving the coated eels a golden, savoury crust.
Stock
Liquid base that gently cooks the eels and forms the gravy.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, fatty gravy.
Essence of anchovy
Adds savoury depth to the sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer gently after frying. Vigorous boiling breaks up the delicate eel pieces and makes the gravy cloudy, so keep the stew at a low simmer.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, pepper, clove, parsley, lemon, anchovy, red wine):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, pepper, clove, parsley, lemon, anchovy, red wine. 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes