Home › The Principles of Cookery › Eels, Collared
Eels, Collared
Take a large eel, cut off the head and tail, and remove the skin and backbone without tearing the flesh. Spread it out flat on a board, and cover it with a seasoning composed of the following ingredients:--A small bunch of herbs, two leaves of sage minced very fine, two cloves, two blades of mace, and a little allspice and whole pepper well pounded, with salt to taste. Roll up the eel, beginning with the broad end, and bind it tightly with a tape. Boil down the backbone, head, and tail with pepper, salt, mace, and vinegar. Put the eel into this liquor and stew about three-quarters of an hour, and when tender set it aside. Boil up the liquor with more vinegar and spice, if required, and when cool add it to the fish. Probable cost, 6d. to 1s. per pound.
A Victorian collared fish, cooked in a vinegar stock made from its own trimmings and served cold in the jellied, soured liquor. Most of the work is in the boning and rolling; the cooking is straightforward.
- Sourcing the eelThe European eel is critically endangered and its trade is restricted under CITES, so wild stock is neither cheap nor easy to buy. Farmed eel or American eel from a reputable fishmonger is the practical option, and a fishmonger may skin and bone it for you if asked.
- Eel bloodRaw eel serum contains a protein toxin that irritates skin and eyes and is dangerous if swallowed in quantity. It is destroyed by heat, so a properly cooked eel is safe, but wash hands, board and knife after boning and keep the blood away from cuts and eyes.
- Boning it flatCut down the back rather than the belly, work the knife along one side of the backbone and then the other, and lift the bone out whole. Keep the fillet in one sheet; a tear in the middle will unroll during the stewing.
- The seasoningA blade of mace is a single piece of the lacy aril around the nutmeg; equivalents given for ground mace vary, but around a quarter to a half teaspoon. "A small bunch of herbs" is not specified here, and would usually mean something like parsley, thyme and a bay leaf; the recipe places it with the rest of the seasoning inside the roll, and only the sage is specified as minced fine.
- TapeVictorian kitchens used narrow cotton tape because it holds a roll flat without cutting into the flesh. Butcher's string at half-inch intervals does the same job. Tie firmly but not so tight that the flesh is squeezed out at the ends.
- The liquorSimmer the head, tail and backbone in water with the vinegar and spices, and strain before the eel goes in. The proportion of vinegar is left to the cook, and one part vinegar to three of water is a workable starting point.
- Cooking timeThree-quarters of an hour suits a thick roll from a large eel. A smaller one will be tender in twenty-five to thirty minutes, and overcooking makes the flesh chalky. Keep it at a bare simmer so the roll holds together.
- Setting and servingLet the eel cool in its liquor, which will set to a light jelly from the bones. Serve cold, sliced across the roll so the spiral shows, with brown bread and butter.
- KeepingThis is a lightly soured dish, not a preserve. Keep it refrigerated, fully covered by the liquor, and eat it within three or four days rather than leaving it in a cool larder as the original assumes.
Collaring — rolling a boned fillet in seasoning, binding it and cooking it in spiced vinegar — was one of the standard English methods for keeping fish and meat before refrigeration, and the word survives in "collared beef". Eels took to it particularly well: they are fatty, they hold together when rolled, and their bones make a stock that sets to jelly, the same quality that underlies jellied eels as a London street food. A price note of sixpence to a shilling a pound, generally attributed to Cassell's, places the dish among cheap fish in the 1870s and 1880s, when Dutch eel boats moored at Billingsgate. The economics have reversed entirely — the European eel is now protected and expensive — but the technique is older than the market for it and works on any firm, fatty fillet.