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Eels, Rolled
Skin, clean, and dry a good-sized eel; split it down one side, and remove the principal bones. Chop finely some parsley, tarragon, and a little sage and onion, and mix them with the yolks of two or three hard-boiled eggs. Rub the fish well with salt and pepper, and fill it with a layer of the mixture; tie it firmly. Boil for half an hour or till tender in equal parts of water and vinegar, with the addition of a bay-leaf, an onion, two or three cloves, a few peppercorns, and salt to taste. Untie the fish and put it into an earthenware vessel, strain the liquor and pour it over. When cold serve with a mayonnaise or a remoulade sauce. Probable cost, 1s. 6d.
A cold jellied eel dish dressed up with a herb-and-yolk stuffing. The hinge is the cooling: the eel must be left in its strained liquor until cold, because that is what sets the jelly and keeps the flesh moist.
- Buying the eelA "good-sized" eel is probably in the region of 1.5-2 lb, which after boning and rolling would serve about four as a cold course. European eel is now critically endangered and CITES-listed, with trade in and out of the EU banned; buy only from a fishmonger who can name the source. Farmed Japanese or American eel are the usual alternatives, though both are themselves listed as threatened.
- Ask for it preparedSkinning and boning a very fresh eel is the most awkward part of the recipe. Many fishmongers who sell eel will kill, skin and split it, leaving you only to lift out the backbone and tie the roll.
- The stuffing proportionsFor a 2 lb eel, roughly 3 tablespoons chopped parsley, 1 tablespoon tarragon, a teaspoon of sage and a little finely chopped onion, worked into the sieved yolks of three hard-boiled eggs; the recipe specifies only "a little sage and onion". The sage will dominate if you go much past a teaspoon.
- TyingRoll the split eel from the tail end and tie at 1-inch intervals with butcher's twine, or wrap in muslin and tie. Eel flesh contracts hard as it cooks and an under-tied roll will spring open in the pan.
- Half vinegar is not a misprintEqual parts water and vinegar makes a fiercely sharp court-bouillon; the acid firms the notoriously fatty flesh, and vinegar at this strength would also help the dish keep, though the recipe itself says nothing about keeping it. If you want it gentler, go to one part vinegar to three of water and eat it the same day.
- Cooking timeThirty minutes at a bare simmer is right for a roll of this thickness; eel is dense and fatty and does not turn to cotton the way a lean white fish does. Test with a skewer at the centre of the roll rather than by the clock.
- Setting the jellyThe "earthenware vessel" is simply a non-reactive dish; a glass or ceramic loaf dish works. Strain the hot liquor over the eel, cool, then refrigerate. Note that the skin and principal bones have already been discarded, so the liquor may set only lightly, if at all.
- ServingSlice through the roll into rounds, wiping the knife between cuts, and serve cold with mayonnaise or remoulade. The probable cost of 1s. 6d. is for the whole dish; eel was among the cheaper fish of the period.
Cassell's gives this as one of a run of eel treatments, which reflects how ordinary the fish was in Victorian Britain: the Thames and the Dutch eel boats moored at Billingsgate supplied a trade of stewed-eel and jellied-eel shops across working London, and the fish was among the cheapest animal protein available. This particular version, though, is the genteel end of the tradition, and its shape is continental rather than cockney: a boned fish rolled round a herb forcemeat, poached in a vinegar court-bouillon and left to set in its own jelly, a treatment that has its counterparts in German and French cooking. Serving it cold under mayonnaise or remoulade puts it squarely in the Victorian cold-buffet repertoire. The trade has since reversed itself entirely: the eel that was cheap enough to feed the poor is now a restricted species and priced accordingly.