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Eel Pie with Tench
Skin two eels, and bone them, and clean and bone two tench. Cut the eels into two-inch pieces, but the tench leave whole. Put water to the bones and trimmings, and stew them for one hour. Strain this liquor, take off the fat, boil with two onions, four blades of mace, three anchovies, pepper, salt, and a bunch of herbs, and it will be ready for the pie. Lay the eels and the tench into a dish, with a few hard-boiled eggs and chopped parsley, in layers, and pour in as much of the liquor as is required. Cover with puff paste, and bake in a rather quick oven. More liquor may be added after the pie is done. Time, about thirty-five minutes to bake. Sufficient for four persons.
A Victorian two-fish pie built on a stock made from its own bones. The stock is the whole point: eel bones are rich in gelatin, so the liquor sets to a jelly as the pie cools, which is why more can be poured in afterwards.
- Oven temperatureA "rather quick oven" is usually read as somewhere around 400-450F (200-230C). Thirty-five minutes at that heat is timed to the puff paste, not the fish; two-inch pieces of eel and boned tench sitting in hot seasoned stock will be done well before the crust colours.
- Sourcing the eelEuropean eel is critically endangered and its trade is restricted under CITES; if you buy eel, buy from a fishmonger who can say where it came from, bearing in mind that Japanese and American eel stocks are also depleted. Ask for it skinned and filleted, which is a tedious job and one many fishmongers will do.
- TenchTench is a European carp-family fish, rarely if ever sold commercially and prone to a muddy flavour even when caught. Any firm freshwater fillet works in its place.
- Blades of maceMace is the outer covering of the nutmeg seed; four "blades" are four pieces of the dried lacy aril, perhaps a teaspoon or so of ground mace if that is what you have. If using ground mace, add it late rather than letting it boil long in the liquor.
- The anchoviesThree anchovies act as seasoning rather than as a flavour in their own right, and they dissolve into the stock. Salt the stock after they have melted in, not before.
- Stock and jellyAn hour is enough to draw the gelatin out of eel bones and trimmings. Skim the fat carefully as instructed, since eel is oily and unskimmed fat turns greasy in a cold pie.
- Crust and ventingThis is a top-crust-only pie in a deep dish. Cut a vent or set a small funnel in the centre, both to let steam out and to give you an opening for the extra liquor once it comes from the oven.
- Filling the piePour in only enough stock to come partway up the fish; a brim-full dish will boil over and lift the paste. The rest goes in hot through the vent after baking, and the pie can then be eaten warm or left to set and served cold.
- YieldFour as written, as a main course with potatoes or a plain salad.
Eel pie was ordinary London food for much of the nineteenth century, when the Thames and its tributaries still yielded eels in quantity and eel-and-pie shops were a fixture of working districts; Eel Pie Island at Twickenham is generally said to take its name from the pies sold at its inn to river excursionists. Tench, a bottom-feeding carp relation, was a pond fish of manor and monastery stew-ponds long before it was a sporting fish, and is paired with eel here for its firmer, whiter flesh against the eel's oiliness. The technique is the point: bones and trimmings that would otherwise be discarded are stewed into a gelatinous liquor that sets the pie without any added thickening, the same logic behind jellied stock.