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Preserve

Eel Soup

A soup made from eels simmered with water, bread crust, mace, pepper, onion, sweet herbs, and finished with cream and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Eel Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Clean the eels and cut them into pieces.

  2. In a pot, combine eels, water, bread crust, mace, pepper, onion, and sweet herbs.

  3. Cover and simmer until the fish is completely broken down.

  4. Strain the mixture to obtain the soup.

Serve

  1. Toast bread and cut it into dice.

  2. Pour the boiling soup over the toasted bread.

  3. For a richer soup, mix cream with flour and add it to the soup before serving.

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. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Bread + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,676 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Mace + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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 fish flesh and body that breaks down into the soup.
Cream
Adds richness and a smoother, fuller mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Flour
Thickens the cream mixture so it blends into the soup without separating.
Bread
Toasted dice soak up hot broth and add a crisp-soft texture.

The step that matters

Adding the cream and flour mixture. Flour mixed into cream should be blended smoothly before it goes into the soup. Lumps won't disperse easily, and adding it to a boiling soup can cause curdling, so stir it in gently near the end.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, pepper, onion, cream, flour):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, pepper, onion, cream, 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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