Skip to main content
Main

Collared Eels

Eels set in a clear fish jelly with parsley, anchovies, hard‑boiled eggs, and beetroot garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 ↓

Collared Eels

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eels

  1. Clean, skin, and boil the eels in seasoned water with pepper, salt, onion, bay leaf, clove, and vinegar.

  2. Remove the bones and cut the eels into 2-inch pieces.

Make the jelly

  1. Strain the boiling liquid and reduce it in a saucepan until clear.

  2. Dissolve ¼ ounce of isinglass in each ½ cup of fish gravy and boil for 1 minute.

  3. Let the mixture cool.

Assemble and set

  1. Arrange the eel pieces in a mold with parsley, slices of hard-boiled eggs, and diced anchovies.

  2. Pour the jelly gently over the eel pieces, one tablespoon at a time.

  3. Let the mold sit in cold water for 7-8 hours before turning it out.

  4. Garnish the dish with parsley, lemon juice, and beetroot.

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. Parsley + beetroottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together745 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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, holding their texture through the poaching and setting.
Isinglass
Sets the cooled liquid into a firm, clear jelly around the eel pieces.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add firm texture and contrast to the soft eel and jelly.
Anchovies
Add a salty, savoury depth that seasons the jelly and fish.

The step that matters

Pouring the jelly over the eel pieces. Pouring slowly, one tablespoon at a time, keeps the cooled jelly from disturbing the arranged pieces and lets it settle evenly around them. Jelly that is too hot can cloud or melt the setting, so it should be cool but still liquid.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, clove, vinegar, parsley, egg, lemon, beetroot):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, clove, vinegar, parsley, egg, lemon, beetroot. 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