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Eel Soup

A soup made from boiled eels, seasoned with pepper, allspice, mace, parsley, and finished with a roux of butter, flour, onion, cayenne, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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 ↓

Eel Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the eels

  1. Boil eels in water without salt, adding pepper, allspice, mace, and parsley.

  2. Once cooked, remove eels and set aside.

  3. Reduce the cooking liquid by boiling until desired quantity is reached.

  4. Strain the liquid and cool it, then remove the fat.

Make the soup

  1. Make a roux with butter, flour, and chopped onion.

  2. Moisten the roux with the strained liquid from the eels.

  3. Season with cayenne and lemon juice, then add the eels back in.

  4. Bring to a boil and serve, garnished as 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. Allspice + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,289 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  5. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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 and body of the soup.
Butter
Carries flavor and enriches the roux as a fat.
Flour
Thickens the soup when cooked with butter into a roux.
Chopped onion
Adds aromatic savory flavor to the roux base.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich broth.

The step that matters

Removing the fat from the strained liquid. Fat left in the cooking liquid can make the soup greasy and dull its flavor. Chilling the liquid lets the fat solidify on top so it can be lifted off cleanly before the roux is moistened.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, allspice, parsley, butter, flour, onion, lemon):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, allspice, parsley, butter, flour, onion, lemon. 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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