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EELS, STEWED (another way)
Cut the heads off one pound and a half of eels; skin and clean them, and cut them into four-inch lengths. Melt one ounce of butter in a small stewpan, put in the eels, and fry them for five minutes. Dredge in a dessert-spoonful of flour, and stir until smooth. Pour in one pint of stock and a quarter of a pint of claret, and stew gently for an hour. Add the juice of half a lemon, and a seasoning of salt, stir well, and serve on a very hot dish. Probable cost, 2s.
A plain brown stew of eel in stock and red wine, of the sort that filled the fish chapters of late Victorian household books. Two things need attention: sourcing the fish, and the hour of stewing.
- Sourcing the eelThe European eel is now listed as critically endangered and its trade is regulated under CITES; wild-caught eel is not something to buy casually. Farmed Japanese or American eel, sold fresh or frozen at Asian fishmongers, is the practical substitute, though it may be sold live, or already grilled and sauced, which will not suit this dish.
- 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 cooked eel is entirely safe, but rinse hands and board after handling and keep the blood away from cuts and eyes.
- An hour is too longAn hour is long -- Four-inch lengths of eel in gently simmering liquid will be cooked through in 20 to 30 minutes, and modern practice would stop there. Eel is firm and gelatinous rather than flaky, however, and long-stewed eel dishes were common, so the full hour is not necessarily an error.
- A dessert-spoonfulTwo teaspoons, midway between the teaspoon and the tablespoon. That much flour to a pint and a quarter of liquid gives a very light sauce, closer to a broth; add more if you want it to coat.
- ClaretRed Bordeaux, or any dry, moderately tannic red. A quarter of a pint is 5 fl oz, half a cup plus a little.
- StewpanThe recipe calls for a small stewpan. Use a saucepan or sauté pan for the eel to sit in one layer, with a lid, so the pieces fry rather than steam in the first five minutes.
- StockThe recipe does not say which stock. Fish stock suits the dish; a light chicken stock works, and Victorian kitchens often used a general meat broth. Avoid anything heavily reduced, as eel is rich enough on its own.
- Yield and servingA pound and a half of eel serves two generously or three modestly. The sauce is thin and the dish wants bread, boiled potatoes or plain rice; the heated dish the original insists on matters, because the gelatin sets quickly as it cools.
Eel was cheap, abundant and, for centuries, one of the most reliably available fish in Britain — caught in the Thames, the Severn and the fen rivers, kept alive in tanks and trunks, and hawked through London streets stewed or jellied. Cassell's gives several eel recipes, and in the 1870s and 80s the fish still cost a fraction of what turbot or salmon did. The addition of claret and a squeeze of lemon marks this as the more genteel treatment: the same fish, dressed in the vocabulary of French stewing rather than the pie-shop's jelly and parsley liquor. That abundance is gone. European eel recruitment fell steeply from the later twentieth century, and a fish once considered the food of the poor is now both expensive and a conservation concern.