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Boiled Eels

Boiled eels seasoned with spices, served with bread and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Boiled Eels

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eels

  1. Clean the small eels and place them in a pot with enough water to cover them.

  2. Add a generous amount of coarse sea salt and bring to a boil.

  3. Mix pepper, mace, allspice, and cloves into a fine powder and rub it inside the eels.

  4. To enhance flavor, mix chopped parsley, sage, knotted marjoram, and savory with the spices and rub it on the eels.

  5. Bind the eels with coarse tape and boil until cooked through.

  6. Let the eels sit in salt for two hours to firm up.

Cook and pickle

  1. Once cooked, add vinegar and let cool before pickling the collar.

  2. For serving, slice the eels or serve them whole.

  3. Coat the eels in breadcrumbs and fry until golden brown.

Make the flounder sauce

  1. Stew flounders with chopped parsley, peppercorns, and water until the fish is tender, then strain through a sieve.

  2. Combine the strained fish with the cooking liquid and fresh parsley leaves, and heat until done.

Serve

  1. Serve the dish in a deep bowl with slices of bread and butter on the side.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Allspice + sagetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together331 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Parsley + sagetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,445 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  5. Allspice + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,289 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Small eels
Are the main protein, cooked gently so the flesh stays moist and firm.
Flounders
Provide the fish body and cooking liquid that gives the sauce its base flavor.
Breadcrumbs
Form a crisp golden coating when the eels are fried.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavor and helps preserve the pickled collar.
Butter
Adds richness and fat for flavor, served alongside the bread.

The step that matters

Bind the eels with coarse tape and boil until cooked through.. Binding keeps the eels in a neat shape while they cook. Boiling must be steady and long enough for the flesh to become opaque and fully cooked, since undercooked eel is unsafe to eat.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, allspice, clove, vinegar, parsley, butter, sage):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, allspice, clove, vinegar, parsley, butter, sage. 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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