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Eels, Potted
Cooked in this manner they are said to be richer and better when unskinned. Choose young eels, and cleanse them as follows. Hold the head of the fish in your left hand, grasp it firmly between the thumb and finger; in the other hand have ready a cloth with a good quantity of coarse salt; draw the eel through, pressing it tightly as it passes through the salt, then soak in salt and water one hour. When thoroughly cleansed, cut them into pieces about two inches long, put them into a brown earthen pot with a cover, season with salt, pepper, and allspice. Pour vinegar and water on them, and bake in a slow oven till tender.
This is a souse rather than a true potting: the eel is baked slowly in acidulated liquid and left to cool in it, which sets into a light jelly. Nothing here is difficult, but the fish demands more preparation than the terse instructions suggest.
- Slow ovenSomewhere in the region of 275-325F; the book gives no temperature. The aim is to hold the eel just below a simmer so the flesh loosens from the bone without shredding. The recipe times it only as 'till tender'.
- The salt-and-cloth trickEel skin carries a heavy slime coat. Coarse salt in a cloth is the traditional and effective way to strip it; kosher or rock salt abrades better than table salt.
- Buy it dressedThe recipe assumes a whole, undressed eel and says nothing about killing or gutting. A fishmonger will kill, gut and cut it for you, which removes the most awkward part of the job. Eel blood contains a protein irritant that is destroyed by heat, so avoid handling raw eel with broken skin.
- Unskinned means scaleless, not unwashedUnskinned means the skin is left on -- eels have only minute scales embedded in the skin, so it can be eaten, and the recipe says they are richer and better that way. It stays rubbery unless fully cooked, which is another argument for the long slow bake.
- Vinegar and waterNo proportion is given. Equal parts, barely covering the fish, is a reasonable reading; malt or cider vinegar suits it better than wine vinegar. An all-vinegar liquid is likely to firm the flesh too much.
- The brown earthen potAny lidded stoneware or enamelled cast-iron dish will do, provided it is non-reactive. Do not use bare aluminium or unlined copper with this much acid.
- AllspiceWhole berries are the likelier intention rather than ground, though the recipe specifies neither form nor quantity.
- Serving and keepingAbout 2 lb of eel serves four. Cool it in its liquid, then eat cold with brown bread. Despite the name, keep it refrigerated and eat within three days; the vinegar alone is not a preservative at modern standards.
- SourcingEuropean eel stocks have collapsed and the species is trade-restricted; Japanese and American eels are also depleted, so buy only from a fishmonger who can say where the fish came from.
Eels were the cheap fish of London for centuries, hauled from the Thames and later shipped live from Holland in wet-well boats to Billingsgate, which is why nineteenth-century English cookery books carry so many eel recipes and why eel, pie and mash shops became a fixture of the East End. Potting and sousing were both keeping methods: potting sealed cooked flesh under fat, while sousing, as here, relied on vinegar and spice. Eel was assumed knowledge in a period when a household cook might be handed a live fish and expected to deal with it, hence the unusually detailed instruction on cleaning the skin.