Home › The Principles of Cookery › Eel Pie
Eel Pie
Having skinned and cleansed two pounds of large-sized eels, divide them into pieces of two or three inches in length. Cut off the heads, tails, and fins, and boil them with a little lemonpeel, a shallot, a blade of mace, and as much of veal or mutton broth as will cover the eels in the pie-dish. Thicken with butter and flour, and add the juice of half a lemon. When strained and cool, pour the broth into the piedish over the eels, sprinkle them with pepper, salt, and chopped parsley, and cover with puff paste. Bake in a moderately brisk oven about one hour and a quarter; or the eels may be stewed first for half an hour and then finished in the pie. Probable cost, 6d. to 1s. per pound.
A Victorian eel pie: no bottom crust, just a deep dish of eel in its own jellied broth under a puff paste lid. Almost everything here still works, but the sourcing and one or two of the instructions need translating.
- Sourcing the eelEuropean eel (Anguilla anguilla) is now critically endangered and CITES-listed, with trade tightly controlled; what is sold in most markets is farmed Japanese eel or, in North America, American eel, itself under pressure. Buy from a fishmonger who can tell you the species and origin, or substitute a firm oily fish.
- Skinning and handlingAsk the fishmonger to skin and gut the eel and cut it into 2-3 inch lengths; the skin is tough and the flesh slippery. Fresh eel blood and serum contain a protein toxin that irritates skin, eyes and cuts ut the wash your hands and work surfaces well. It is completely destroyed by cooking, which is why eel is never eaten raw.
- Heads, tails and finsThese are the stock, not waste. Simmer them 30-40 minutes with the lemon peel, shallot and mace, then strain through a fine sieve. The bones and skin are rich in gelatine, which is what sets the pie to a jelly when it cools.
- A blade of maceOne whole piece of dried nutmeg aril, roughly the surface area of a thumbnail. If you have only ground mace, a scant quarter-teaspoon in the stock, then strained out, is close enough.
- How much brothThe recipe measures by eye: enough veal or mutton broth to cover the eel in the pie dish, which for 2 lb of eel in a deep dish is roughly 1 to 1 1/4 imperial pints (about 2 1/2 to 3 US cups). Thicken it lightly, with about 1 oz each butter and flour -- the result should coat a spoon, not stand up in it.
- Cool the broth before it goes inThe instruction to strain and cool is not fussiness. Hot liquid poured into the dish will melt the underside of the puff paste before it goes in the oven, and the lid will slump.
- OvenThe book gives no temperatures. 'Moderately brisk' is usually taken to mean somewhere around 400-425F (200-220C) for the first 20 minutes to lift the pastry, then dropping to 350F (180C) for the remainder. A full hour and a quarter at high heat risks overcooking the eel; the alternative the recipe itself gives -- stewing the eel 30 minutes first, then a shorter bake -- is the better route if your pastry browns fast.
- ServingTwo pounds of eel makes a pie for about four. It is as good cold as hot: the gelatine in the broth sets to a soft jelly overnight, and cold eel pie was commonly sold and eaten that way.
Eel was cheap London food, and Cassell's gives a price of "6d. to 1s. per pound." The Thames and its tributaries supplied eels in quantity, and Dutch eel boats moored at Billingsgate for centuries selling live fish; eel pie, stewed eels and jellied eels were staples of the riverside and East End trade long before the pie-and-mash shops formalised them. Eel Pie Island at Twickenham takes its name from the dish, which was sold to day-trippers there "the association is well documented in nineteenth-century accounts, including Dickens's. What is striking now is the reversal: a fish included here as one of the cheapest things a household could buy has become scarce and expensive, its European population having collapsed to a small fraction of historic levels since the 1980s.