Home › The Principles of Cookery › EELS, BOILED (another way)
EELS, BOILED (another way)
With a sharp knife cut the heads off two pounds of eels, skim and clean the fish, and cut them into four-inch lengths. Put them into a stewpan with enough cold water to cover them, bring to the boil and stew gently for twenty minutes. Strain off into a fresh saucepan about three quarters of a pint of the liquor in which they were soaked, and stir into this a table-spoonful of flour mixed smoothly with a quarter of a pint of thick cream; add a dessert-spoonful of minced parsley and a seasoning of pepper and salt, and simmer all gently till the sauce is nicely thickened. Put in a small pinch of cayenne and half an ounce of butter, and stir till this is melted. Drain the eels, arrange on a hot dish, pour the sauce over, and serve at once. Probable cost, 6d. to 1s. per pound.
A plain boiled eel with a parsley cream sauce, of the sort that was everyday cooking when eel was cheap river fish. Most of what needs translating is the vessels, the spoon sizes and the fish itself.
- "Skim" is a misprint for "skin"Eels are skinned, not skimmed. The usual method is to cut through the skin behind the head, loosen an inch with the knife, then grip it with a cloth or pliers and pull it back down the body. A fishmonger will do this and gut the fish for you, which is worth asking for.
- MeasuresThree-quarters of an imperial pint of the cooking liquor (15 fl oz) is about 1 3/4 cups; a quarter pint of cream is a generous 1/2 cup. Half an ounce of butter is one tablespoon. A dessert-spoonful of parsley is about 2 teaspoons, and a tablespoon of flour is roughly a level modern tablespoon.
- The hinge: mix the flour into cold cream, then temperStir the flour into the cold cream until completely smooth, then add a ladle of the hot liquor to the cream before returning it all to the pan. Tipping cold cream and flour straight into simmering stock gives lumps, and a sauce boiled hard after the cream goes in will split.
- Cooking timeTwenty minutes suits thick four-inch cuts from a large eel; the flesh is dense and gelatinous and takes longer than most white fish. Smaller eels an inch or so through will be done in 10 to 12 minutes, when the flesh parts cleanly from the backbone.
- The cooking liquor is the stockNothing is added to the water, so all the flavour of the sauce comes from the eel itself. Salt the water lightly at the start and skim the grey foam that rises, or the finished sauce will taste muddy.
- Do not eat eel raw or undercookedFresh eel blood contains a heat-labile protein that is an irritant if eaten raw; thorough cooking destroys it, which is why eel is always served fully cooked or jellied and never raw. Cook it through, as the recipe does.
- SourcingThe European eel is now severely depleted and its international trade is restricted, so what you buy will usually be farmed. Ask what species you are getting and where it came from.
- YieldTwo pounds of eel on the bone serves about three as a main course, four as a first course. Boiled potatoes or bread and butter suit it.
Eel was one of the cheapest fish in Britain for centuries, which is exactly why Cassell's quotes it at sixpence to a shilling a pound and gives it several separate treatments: it was food you could put on a table without much money. The Thames and the Essex and Kentish marshes supplied London, and imported live eels came up the river from the Netherlands in well-boats into the nineteenth century, sold from tanks so the fish stayed alive until wanted. The stewed and jellied eels of London street cookery come from the same supply; this recipe is the parlour version of the same fish, with the cooking liquor turned into a flour-and-cream sauce and finished with parsley and butter in the standard late-Victorian manner. The reversal since then is complete: eel is now scarce and expensive, and the fish that fed the poorest households in the country is a delicacy.} </json_schema>