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Hamburg Eel-soup

A soup made with eel, fish heads, vegetables, pears, apples, and herbs, simmered with wine and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Pear and apple match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 649 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, fruity. The science ↓

Hamburg Eel-soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eel

  1. Remove the skin and jowls from the eels and slice them.

  2. Place the eel slices in a pot with fish heads, parsley, aromatics, salt, cloves, and peppercorns.

  3. Add enough white wine and water to moisten the mixture.

  4. Once the fish is cooked, strain the broth into another pot and bring it to a boil.

Add vegetables and fruit

  1. Add a variety of new vegetables, starting with those that take longer to cook.

  2. Cut some vegetables into dice and leave green peas and beans whole.

  3. When the vegetables are nearly done, thicken the broth with roux or kneaded butter.

  4. Add the peeled and blanched pears and halved apples to the soup.

  5. Once the fruits and vegetables are cooked, add the eel slices, a pinch of sugar, vinegar, and freshly chopped fine herbs.

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. Pear + appletop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together649 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  2. Clove + appletop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Parsley + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Clove + peartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together512 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. White wine + appletop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together372 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Small live eels
Provide the main fish flesh and body of the soup.
Roux or kneaded butter
Thickens the broth to give it a smooth, body-rich texture.
Small whole pears
Add natural sweetness and soft texture as they cook through.
Small new apples
Add tartness and soft fruit texture to balance the rich broth.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the finished soup.

The step that matters

Thickening the broth with roux or kneaded butter. Add the roux only when the vegetables are nearly done, so the broth thickens smoothly. Added to a boiling liquid all at once, flour can clump instead of dissolving evenly.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, clove, white wine, butter, pear, apple, sugar):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, clove, white wine, butter, pear, apple, sugar. 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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