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Stewed Eels

A stew of eels simmered with onion, garlic, parsley, lemon rind, stock, and seasoned with salt, pepper, cayenne, anchovy essence, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 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 ↓

Stewed Eels

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eels

  1. To kill the eels, insert a skewer into the spinal marrow behind the head. Do not cut off the head.

  2. Skin the eels by cutting around the neck and pulling the skin down with a cloth.

  3. Gut the eels without breaking the gall, cut into 2-inch pieces, and soak in strong saltwater for 1 hour.

  4. Dry the pieces, roll in seasoned flour, and fry in good dripping until lightly browned.

  5. Drain the fried eels until cold to remove oily taste.

Stew and make the sauce

  1. In a clean stew-pan, combine eels with bay leaf, onion with cloves, parsley, lemon rind, and stock.

  2. Simmer gently for 20-30 minutes based on thickness.

  3. Remove eels and keep warm while preparing the sauce.

  4. Strain the gravy, thicken with flour, and add salt, cayenne, essence of anchovy, and lemon juice. Simmer for 10 minutes.

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

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

  4. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Clove + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Eels
Firm, oily flesh that holds its shape during frying and gentle stewing.
Flour
Seasoned flour coats the pieces, browning them and thickening the gravy.
Good dripping
Fat that fries the coated eel pieces, adding browning and rich flavour.
Stock
Liquid that gently cooks the eels and forms the base of the gravy.
Essence of anchovy
Adds a salty, savoury depth to the finished gravy.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, oily gravy.

The step that matters

Drain the fried eels until cold. Eels are oily, and letting the fried pieces drain and cool lets excess fat run off, so the stew does not taste greasy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, pepper, clove, parsley, lemon, anchovy):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, pepper, clove, parsley, lemon, anchovy. 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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