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Eels, Fried
After the eel has been skinned and cleansed, cut it into neat pieces of four inches long, and when quite dry, season them with salt and pepper, and dip each piece into the beaten yolk of egg, cover it with bread-crumbs, and fry to a nice brown in butter or lard. If the eels are small they are usually curled round instead of being cut into pieces. Garnish with fried parsley, and serve on a napkin. Fry for about twenty minutes. Probable cost, 6d. to 1s. per pound.
A straightforward crumbed fry, but the timing and the fish itself both need comment before you start.
- Twenty minutes is far too longTwenty minutes is long for a shallow fry -- four-inch pieces of crumbed eel are usually done in nearer 8 to 10 minutes, turning once; the flesh should be opaque and flaking from the backbone. Judge by colour rather than the clock: held too long the crumb burns and the eel dries out. Fat at around 340-350F.
- Sourcing the eelEuropean eel is now listed under CITES Appendix II and its export from the EU is banned, so wild-caught European eel is not something to buy casually. Farmed Japanese eel (unagi) or American eel from a reputable fishmonger is the practical substitute; ask for it killed, skinned and gutted, which is a genuinely unpleasant job at home.
- Eel bloodRaw eel serum contains a protein toxin that is irritating to the gut and dangerous in the eyes or an open cut. Heat destroys it completely, so a properly cooked fry is entirely safe — but wash hands, board and knife well, and do not taste anything raw.
- "Quite dry"This is the hinge of the recipe. Eel is oily and wet, and egg-and-crumb will slide straight off damp skinless flesh. Pat the pieces thoroughly with paper, salt them, let them sit ten minutes, pat again, then coat.
- Egg yolk onlyThe original specifies beaten yolk, which gives a richer, deeper-browning coat than whole egg. Loosen it with a teaspoon of water or milk per yolk or it will be too thick to drain evenly.
- Butter or lardButter alone will brown and burn before the eel is cooked at this thickness. Use lard, a neutral oil, or clarified butter; if you want the butter flavour, use half oil and half butter.
- Fried parsleyDry parsley sprigs dropped into the hot fat for 10 to 15 seconds, then drained — they crisp almost instantly and turn bitter and black if left. Wet parsley will spit violently, so dry it completely first.
- Serving on a napkinA Victorian convention: a folded linen napkin on the dish absorbed frying fat and kept the crust crisp on the way to table. Paper towel under the pieces on a warm platter does the same and is easier to launder.
- Yield and costNo quantity is given. Reckon 6 to 8 oz of prepared eel per person as a main course; a 2 lb dressed eel serves four. The "6d. to 1s. per pound" is a price note for the housekeeper, not an instruction.
Eel was cheap, abundant and enormously popular in nineteenth-century Britain, especially in London, where stewed-eel and pie shops operated in every working district and Dutch eel-schuyts moored at Billingsgate to sell live fish from holding tanks. Because eels stay alive out of water for a long time, they could be sold fresh in a city with no refrigeration, which is much of the reason they turn up so often — stewed, jellied, spitchcocked, in pies, and fried like this — in a general dictionary of cookery such as Cassell's. The price note of sixpence to a shilling a pound puts it at the affordable end of fish for a middle-class kitchen. That abundance has gone: eel stocks collapsed across the twentieth century, the European eel is now critically endangered, and a fish once treated as ordinary household food has become a controlled and expensive one.