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Baked Eels

Baked eels are seasoned, baked, and served with a flour coating.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Baked Eels

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Cut the eels into pieces and lay them upright in a shallow pan.

  2. Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, sweet herbs, and chopped parsley.

  3. Add a little water to the pan.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until done.

  2. Stir in smooth flour 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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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, cooking into tender flesh in the pan.
Flour
Thickens the pan juices into a smoother, more cohesive sauce.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour smoothly. Flour dispersed into hot liquid can clump, because its starch granules swell on contact before they separate. Stirring it into the pan juices until smooth gives an even thickening.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Jalapenofits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Marjoramfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, 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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