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Eels a LA Tartare

A stew of eels cooked with carrots, onion, garlic, herbs, stock, and white wine, finished with a roux and egg yolk sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Eels a LA Tartare

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eels

  1. Skin the eels and cut off the heads and tails.

  2. Shape the eels into a ring.

Stew

  1. In a stewpan, combine the eels with carrots, onion, garlic, parsley, thyme, bay leaf, cloves, salt, pepper, stock, and white wine.

  2. Cover the stew with buttered paper and stew over low heat for about an hour.

  3. Remove the eels from the stew.

Make the sauce

  1. Make a roux by cooking flour and butter together.

  2. Mix the roux with the sauce from the stew until well combined and reduced.

  3. Add 2-3 egg yolks to the sauce.

  4. Strain the sauce over the eels.

Finish and serve

  1. Let the eels cool.

  2. Sprinkle the eels with bread crumbs and moisten with sauce or beaten egg, then sprinkle more bread crumbs on top.

  3. Wash the top with melted butter.

  4. Broil or bake until done.

  5. Serve with sauce tartare.

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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  3. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  5. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 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
Main protein that becomes tender and flaky during the long, gentle stew.
Flour
Thickens the stew liquid into a smooth sauce when cooked with butter as a roux.
Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and flavor and helps the crumb topping brown.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce, giving it body and a richer texture.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned crust over the eels when broiled or baked.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks to the sauce. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat; if the sauce is too hot when they go in, they can scramble and turn grainy. Add them off the heat or after the sauce has cooled slightly, stirring constantly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, clove, garlic, parsley, thyme, pepper, white wine):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, clove, garlic, parsley, thyme, pepper, white wine. 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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