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Eels a LA Poulette

A French-style eel stew with vinegar, wine, butter, flour, herbs, mushrooms, onion, lemon juice, egg yolks, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Eels a LA Poulette

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eels

  1. Skin and clean the eels, then cut them into pieces.

  2. Boil the eels in water with vinegar, then drain them.

Make the sauce

  1. In a stewpan, melt butter mixed with flour without burning it.

  2. Moisten the mixture with wine and boiling water.

  3. Add salt, pepper, sweet herbs, mushrooms, lemon juice, and onion.

  4. Let the eels stew in this mixture for half an hour.

Finish and serve

  1. Beat the egg yolks with cream and add to the stew, warming without boiling.

  2. Serve the dish.

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

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

  2. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  3. Wine + mushroomtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,632 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-propylphenol (allspice, anise).

  4. Mushroom + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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 in the sauce.
Butter
Carries flavour and enriches the sauce, while forming the base for the thickening roux.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter, giving it body.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the finished sauce when warmed gently with cream.
Cream
Adds richness and smoothness, softening the sauce's flavour and texture.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and savoury depth to the sauce.

The step that matters

Warming the egg yolk and cream. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently but scramble if they boil. Keeping the stew below boiling after adding the yolk and cream gives a smooth, lightly thickened sauce rather than a grainy one.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, butter, flour, wine, pepper, mushroom, lemon):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, butter, flour, wine, pepper, mushroom, lemon. 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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