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Eel Broth
Take one pound of eels, a bunch of sweet herbs, some parsley, one onion, a few peppercorns, cloves, and salt and pepper to taste. Clean and skin the fish, cut them into small pieces, and put them into a stewpan with the other ingredients, and six pints of water. Simmer till the liquid is reduced one-half, remove the scum as it rises, and strain all through a sieve. When the broth is cold and wanted for use, take off the fat and warm only what is required. Sippets of toasted bread should be served at the same time. Probable cost, 1s. 2d. Sufficient to make three pints of broth.
An invalid's broth from the era when eel was cheap, fatty river fish and beef tea's nearest rival. Nothing here is difficult; the work is in the reduction and in getting the fat off.
- The measurements are imperialSix imperial pints is 120 imperial fl oz, or about 3.6 US quarts (a little over 14 cups). Reduced by half it gives roughly 60 fl oz, which is the "three pints" of the yield note. Expect 90 minutes to two hours at a bare simmer in a wide pan.
- Fat removal is the hingeEel is one of the fattiest fish sold, and this broth will set with a thick pale cap on top. The recipe is explicit about chilling it fully and lifting that off before reheating; skip it and the broth is greasy and cloying rather than clean.
- Sweet herbsA tied bundle of thyme, marjoram and a bay leaf, with the parsley stalks. "A bunch" is not a fixed quantity; a few sprigs of each is a reasonable scale for a pound of fish.
- Sourcing eelEuropean eel is critically endangered and trade in it is restricted, so what you find may be farmed eel, often Japanese eel, or, in North America, American eel, which is itself of conservation concern. Ask for it whole and untrimmed if you want it for stock, since heads and bones carry most of the gelatine.
- SkinningFishmongers will skin and gut eel on request, which is worth asking for. If you do it yourself, the flesh is slippery and the skin tough; a cloth for grip matters more than a sharp knife.
- Simmer, do not boilA rolling boil emulsifies the abundant eel fat into the liquid and makes it permanently cloudy. Keep it at a lazy simmer and skim as instructed, then strain through a sieve lined with cloth if you want it clear.
- SippetsSmall pieces or fingers of toasted bread, served alongside rather than floated in the broth. In a sickroom recipe they are the whole of the solid food.
- Seasoning at the endSalting at the start of a liquid you intend to halve will leave it too salty. Season lightly, reduce, then correct.
- YieldAbout three imperial pints, or roughly seven US cups: several days of feeding for one invalid, or a first course for six.
Eel broth belongs to the large class of Victorian "cookery for invalids" preparations, which occupy their own chapters in books like Cassell's and in Mrs Beeton before it. The logic was dietetic rather than gastronomic: a long-simmered liquid was thought to carry the nourishment of the flesh in a form a weak stomach could take, and eel was valued for being rich and gelatinous. Eel was also cheap in Britain at the time, and live eels were a familiar sight in London street trade. The fashion for feeding the sick on fish and beef teas faded in the twentieth century as nutrition was better understood, and eel itself went from a staple of the London poor to an expensive rarity, a reversal that makes this one of the more thoroughly dated pages in the book.