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Eels, Fricasseed
Cut up four pounds of skinned eels into pieces four inches in length, put them into a stewpan with equal quantities of sherry wine and water, enough to cover them; add twenty oysters, a bunch of herbs, an onion stuck with five or six cloves, some parsley, pepper, salt, and cayenne. When the eels have stewed one hour remove them to a dish, strain the gravy, and put it back into the stewpan with a quarter of a pint of cream and some butter--about an ounce--rolled in flour. When this gravy begins to thicken pour it over the fish. Serve with horse-radish as a garnish. Probable cost, 6d. to 1s. per pound. Sufficient for eight or ten persons.
A Victorian stew of eel in sherry and cream, thickened with beurre manié. The method is sound; the timings and the oysters need adjusting, and the sourcing question is a modern one.
- Sourcing the eelEuropean eel is listed on CITES Appendix II and its export from the EU is banned, so wild stock is not the casual purchase it was in the 1880s. Buy farmed eel, or American or Japanese eel from a fishmonger who can tell you its origin, and ask to have it killed, skinned and gutted for you.
- Eel bloodRaw eel serum contains a protein toxin that irritates skin and eyes and is dangerous if it reaches a cut or the mouth. It is broken down by cooking, so a thoroughly cooked stew is not a concern, but wash hands, board and knife well after handling raw pieces and do not taste anything raw.
- The hour is too longFour-inch cuts of modern farmed eel are tender in 25 to 35 minutes at a bare simmer; past that the flesh shreds off the bone and the fat renders out into the liquor.
- Add the oysters at the endTwenty oysters stewed for a full hour become rubber. Poach them in the strained gravy for a minute or two while it thickens, or slip them into the finished sauce off the heat and let the residual warmth just firm their edges.
- A quarter of a pint of creamAn imperial pint is 20 fl oz, so this is 5 fl oz, or a scant two-thirds of a US cup. Use double or heavy cream; single cream will thin and may split against the wine.
- Butter rolled in flourThis is beurre manié: work the ounce of soft butter with roughly the same volume of flour into a paste and whisk it into the simmering gravy in small pieces. Let it bubble a minute or two so the flour loses its rawness, but do not boil hard once the cream is in.
- The sherryEqual parts sherry and water to cover four pounds of eel is a great deal of fortified wine, and much of what was sold as sherry in this period was sweeter than a modern dry style. A medium-dry amontillado works; if the finished sauce tastes strident, a pinch of sugar settles it.
- Garnish and yieldGrate the horseradish fresh at the table, not into the hot sauce, where it goes flat within minutes. Four pounds of eel on the bone will serve six to eight generously as a main course, rather than the eight to ten the recipe claims.
Eel was one of the great cheap proteins of nineteenth-century England, though the price given here, sixpence to a shilling a pound, was moderate rather than rock-bottom, and comparable to much of the sea fish then sold in London. Live eels came into London from the Thames and its tributaries and, in far greater numbers, from Holland aboard the Dutch eel schuyts that were long permitted to moor off Billingsgate and sell from their wells, keeping the fish alive until the moment of purchase. That, and the eel's own hardiness, made it a staple fish of the pie shops and stalls of the East End. What separates this recipe from street food is the treatment: sherry, cream, oysters and a clove-stuck onion are the vocabulary of the Anglo-French kitchen, and the same oysters that a costermonger ate by the dozen are used here as seasoning. Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery, an omnibus compiled for middle-class households, routinely does this, taking a workaday ingredient and dressing it in a manner its readers would recognise from a restaurant table.