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Eels, Broiled
Clean and skin two eels; if large ones, cut them into pieces of three or four inches; if small, they should be curled round, but first sprinkled with a mixture of chopped parsley, pepper, salt, and a little powdered sage, then rubbed or dipped in yolk of egg, and strewn with bread-crumbs. Broil over a clear fire till lightly browned. Send to table melted butter sharpened with lemon-juice. Time, twenty minutes. Probable cost, from 6d. to 1s. per pound. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A straightforward egg-and-crumb grill, written for a coal fire and a hinged gridiron. Two things need translating: what "melted butter" meant in 1880s cookery books, and how to keep the crumbs from burning before the fish is done.
- "A clear fire"This means glowing coals with no flames and no smoke — the crumb coating scorches instantly over an open flame. Charcoal that has burned down to grey ash, or an oven broiler with the pieces 4-5 inches from the element, gives the same steady radiant heat.
- "Melted butter" is a sauceIn Victorian usage this is butter sauce — butter thickened with a little flour and water into a pourable coating sauce, not simply liquefied butter. Sharpened with lemon juice it becomes the standard accompaniment to grilled fish of the period.
- The twenty minutesThat timing suits thick 3-4 inch cuts from a large eel. Small curled eels or thin tail sections are done in 8-12 minutes; go by the flesh turning opaque and pulling from the bone, around 145F at the centre. Eel is rich and forgiving but the coating will not survive being held over the coals waiting.
- Curling the small onesRun a skewer through the coiled body, or through head and tail, before the egg and crumbs. Without it the eel relaxes and unwinds on the grid.
- Fat content works in your favourEel is one of the fattest fish sold; it self-bastes and does not need oiling. Set a drip tray under a broiler, as the rendered fat flares readily.
- Skinning and handlingFishmongers will skin and gut eel on request, which is worth asking for. Eel blood contains a protein toxin that is destroyed by cooking but irritates cuts and eyes, so wash hands and board well if you prepare it yourself.
- SourcingThe European eel is critically endangered and CITES-listed, with EU export banned; American and Japanese eel are also under pressure. Buy from a farmed or certified source, and expect to pay far more than the sixpence to a shilling a pound quoted here.
- YieldThe recipe gives two eels as "sufficient for four or five persons"; no weight is specified. With bread and the butter sauce that is a plausible main-course serving.
Eel was cheap, abundant and unfashionable food in Victorian Britain, and Cassell's quotes a notably low price per pound for it. The Thames and the Fens supplied London's eel trade, and the eel ships from Holland moored at Billingsgate kept the city in live fish year-round; the surplus went into eel pies, eel soup and the jellied eels still associated with the East End. Grilling — "broiling" in nineteenth-century English means cooking on a gridiron over coals, not under a heat source above — suited a fish oily enough to need no added fat, and the egg-and-breadcrumb coating with parsley and sage is a common Victorian dress for grilled fish. Sage appears with eel in earlier English cookery; the reason usually given, that the herb counters the fish's richness, is traditional explanation rather than documented fact.