  Detached, double-lined spectroscopic binaries which are also eclipsing
provide the most accurate determinations of stellar mass, radius, temperature
and distance-independent luminosity for each of their individual components,
and hence constitute a stringent test of single-star stellar evolution theory.
We compile a large sample of 60 non interacting, well-detached systems mostly
with typical errors smaller than 2% for mass and radius and smaller than 5% for
effective temperature, and compare them with the properties predicted by
stellar evolutionary tracks from a minimization method. To assess the
systematic errors introduced by a given set of tracks, we compare the results
obtained using three widely-used independent sets of tracks, computed with
different physical ingredients (the Geneva, Padova and Granada models). We also
test the hypothesis that the components of these systems are coeval and have
the same metallicity, and compare the derived ages and metallicities with the
ones obtained by fitting a single isochrone to the system. Overall, there is a
good agreement among the different determinations, and we provide a
comprehensive discussion on the sub-sample of systems which either present
problems or have estimated metallicities. Although within the errors the
published tracks can fit most of the systems, a large degeneracy between age
and metallicity remains. The power of the test is thus limited because the
metallicities of most of the systems are unknown.
