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Stewed Eels

Stewed eels simmered in stock with herbs, mace, cloves, peppercorns, bay leaf, and mushroom ketchup, served hot with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and clove are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,400 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Stewed Eels

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eels

  1. Cut the eels into pieces and roll them in flour, pepper, and salt.

  2. Heat the butter in a sauté pan and quickly brown the eels.

  3. Remove the eels and brown the sliced onion in the same pan.

Stew and serve

  1. Add the eels, meat stock, herbs, mace, cloves, peppercorns, bay leaf, and mushroom ketchup to the pan.

  2. Cook slowly for 30 minutes.

  3. Serve the eels with the strained gravy over them.

  4. Garnish the eels with fried croutons and mashed potatoes.

  5. Serve very hot.

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. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

  4. Clove + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,663 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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
Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender as they stew slowly in the stock.
Flour
Coats the eels so they brown and thicken the stock into a gravy.
Meat stock
Provides the liquid base that cooks the eels and forms the gravy.
Butter
Adds fat for browning the eels and onion and enriches the flavour.
Onion
Browns in the pan to add sweetness and savoury depth to the gravy.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds concentrated savoury, umami flavour to the stewing liquid.

The step that matters

Quickly brown the eels. Brief high-heat browning in butter builds savoury flavour and a seared surface, while prolonged browning would toughen the delicate flesh before stewing.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, onion, clove, mushroom, ketchup, butter, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, onion, clove, mushroom, ketchup, butter, 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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