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Eel Soup

A soup made with eel, onion, stock, and tapioca, seasoned with salt, pepper, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Eel Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and slice the onion.

  2. Fry the onion in hot fat until pale brown, but not burnt.

  3. Cut the skinned eel into pieces and add it to the pan with the fried onion.

  4. Pour in 3 pints of stock or water.

  5. Bring the mixture to a boil. Skim the surface.

Simmer and strain

  1. Simmer gently for about 1 hour.

  2. Strain the soup.

  3. Return the strained soup to the stew pan.

Finish and serve

  1. Sprinkle in the tapioca or sago.

  2. Season with salt and pepper.

  3. Serve with a little chopped parsley added just 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. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Eel
Provides the main body of flavour and the protein that gives the soup substance.
Onion
Browning in the fat builds sweetness and savoury depth as the base of the soup.
Dripping or butter
Fat for frying the onion, carrying flavour and helping it brown evenly.
Tapioca or sago
Starch that thickens the strained soup as it is stirred in.

The step that matters

Frying the onion until pale brown, not burnt. Gentle browning in hot fat develops sweet, savoury flavour, while scorched onion turns bitter and carries that bitterness into the whole soup.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, parsley. 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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