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Eels, Stewed

Stewed eels cooked slowly with butter, onion, parsley, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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 ↓

Eels, Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Skin and clean the eels, then cut them into 2-inch pieces.

  2. Place the eels in a jar with the butter, sliced onion, parsley, salt, and pepper.

Cook

  1. Cover the jar tightly and place it in a saucepan of cold water.

  2. Slowly bring the water to a boil and cook until the eels are tender, about 14 hours.

Serve

  1. Once done, serve on a hot dish and strain the gravy over the eels.

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 + peppertop 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. Butter + oniontop 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

Eels
Form the main body of the dish, and slow gentle cooking tenderises their firm flesh.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, helping the eels stay soft during the long cooking.
Onion
Adds sweet, aromatic flavour that infuses into the gravy.

The step that matters

Bringing the water to a boil slowly. Eel flesh toughens and breaks apart when cooked too hard. Heating the water gradually and keeping the jar tightly covered lets the eels cook gently in their own juices and butter, keeping them tender and the gravy rich.

Swap the onion

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

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

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