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Stewed Eels

A stew of eels cooked with onion, garlic, herbs, mace, pepper, lemon, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Stewed Eels

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the eels well and cut them into 2-3 inch pieces.

  2. Place the eels in a pan with onion, cloves, sweet herbs, mace, and whole pepper in a muslin rag.

  3. Add enough water to create a sauce and let them stew softly.

Stew and serve

  1. After a while, add the juice of ½ lemon and the butter rolled in flour.

  2. Once the eels are tender, remove the onion, cloves, herbs, mace, and pepper.

  3. Season with coarse sea salt to taste and serve with the sauce.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Onion + peppertop 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
The main protein, which becomes tender as it stews gently in the liquid.
Butter rolled in flour
Flour thickens the sauce while butter adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the rich stewed sauce.

The step that matters

Stewing softly until tender. Eels need gentle, low simmering rather than a hard boil. Vigorous boiling toughens the proteins and can break the pieces apart, so keep the liquid at a soft simmer until they are tender.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, clove, pepper, sauce, lemon, butter, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, clove, pepper, sauce, lemon, 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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