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Another Way to Stew Eels

A stew of eels cooked with butter, herbs, onion, lemon, anchovy, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 887 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Another Way to Stew Eels

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Season the eels with salt and black pepper.

Make the stew

  1. In a stew pan, melt the butter and add sorrel, sage leaves, onion, lemon peel, and anchovy.

  2. Add the eels and pour in the water.

  3. Stew gently for 30 minutes, shaking occasionally.

Finish and serve

  1. Before serving, add grated nutmeg 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. Sage + lemontop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together887 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Sage + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together642 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  5. Sorrel + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together89 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 protein, which becomes tender and flaky during gentle stewing.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying the flavour of the aromatics into the stew.
Sorrel
Contributes a sharp, lemony acidity that brightens the rich broth.
Onion
Builds a savoury sweetness as it softens in the butter.
Anchovy
Adds deep savoury, umami flavour that rounds out the stew.

The step that matters

Stew gently for 30 minutes. Gentle heat keeps the eel pieces tender and intact; a hard boil toughens the flesh and can break it apart. Occasional shaking moves the pieces so they cook evenly without sticking.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, butter, sorrel, sage, lemon, anchovy, nutmeg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, sorrel, sage, lemon, anchovy, 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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