Skip to main content
Main

Eel Soup

A soup made with eels, onions, butter, mace, herbs, peppercorns, flour, cream, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Eel Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the eels and cut them into thin slices.

  2. In a stewpan, melt the butter and add the eels; let them simmer for a few minutes.

Make the soup

  1. Pour in the water and add the onion, herbs, mace, and seasoning.

  2. Simmer until the eels are tender, being careful not to break them.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the eels carefully and mix the flour smoothly with the cream.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil and pour it over the eels 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Onion + macetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

  5. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 main protein and flesh of the soup, becoming tender during simmering.
Flour
Thickens the cream mixture, giving the finished soup body and a smoother texture.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the thickened finishing mixture.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour when melted with the eels at the start.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour smoothly with the cream. Flour clumps if added dry or unevenly to hot liquid. Whisking it smoothly into cold cream first lets the starch disperse evenly, so the thickened soup stays silky rather than lumpy.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, flour, cream. 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.

More eel soup recipes

Conger 4 See all 77 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes