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Richmond Eel Pie
Skin, draw, and cut into two-inch lengths two good-sized eels, wash them in salt and water, and dry them in a cloth. Put them into a stewpan with an ounce and a half of butter, two table-spoonfuls of chopped mushrooms, one table-spoonful of chopped parsley, one onion, or a small clove of shallot finely shredded, a little pepper and salt, a bay-leaf, an inch of lemon-rind, a glass of sherry, and as much stock made from bones as will barely cover the eels. Bring the sauce slowly to the boil, skim it, and as it rises in the pan lift out the pieces of eel, and lay them in a pie-dish. Strain the sauce, thicken it with two ounces of flour kneaded with two ounces of butter, add the juice of a lemon, and pour it over the eels in the dish. Place on the top the hard-boiled yolks of three or four eggs. Line the edges of the dish with pastry, cover with the same, brush over with egg, ornament the pie, and bake in a well-heated oven. It may be served either hot or cold. Time to bake, about one hour. Probable cost, 4s. to 6s. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A Victorian pie-dish recipe: the eel is part-cooked in a rich stock first, so the hour in the oven is really about the pastry and about setting the sauce firm enough to slice cold.
- Sourcing the eelEuropean eel is now critically endangered and its trade is restricted; buy only clearly labelled farmed eel, or substitute conger, monkfish tail or another firm white fish. A fishmonger will skin and gut it for you, which spares you the worst of the job.
- 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 pie is entirely safe, but wash hands, board and knife well and keep raw eel juices away from your face.
- A glass of sherryA wineglass in Victorian recipe books is usually reckoned at about 2 fl oz (a quarter cup), though the measure was never standardised. Use a dry amontillado or fino rather than anything sweet.
- "A well-heated oven"The book gives no temperature. A hot oven of this description is generally read as somewhere around 400-425F (200-220C), dropping to about 375F (190C) once the pastry has set. The recipe itself says about an hour; at that heat you may find it done sooner, since the eel is already part-cooked.
- The thickeningTwo ounces each of flour and butter makes a firm beurre manie, which suits a pie meant to be sliced cold, though the recipe does not say that is the reason. If you plan to serve it hot, you may prefer to halve it, whisking it in a little at a time off the boil.
- Lifting the eelThe instruction to take the pieces out "as it rises in the pan" appears to mean at the first boil, not after any real cooking; the eel finishes in the oven.
- Pastry and dishOnly the rim of the dish is lined and a lid laid over, so there is no soggy base to worry about. Use a raised-rim pie dish and a pie funnel to keep the crust off the sauce; shortcrust or a rough puff both suit. "Ornament" means leaves or a rope cut from the trimmings.
- YolksHard-boiled yolks only, whites discarded or saved for something else; three or four means the yolks of three or four eggs, laid whole over the fish.
- Yield and costFive or six as written. The "4s. to 6s." is the Victorian retail cost of the ingredients, not a modern guide to anything.
Eel pie was London river food. The Thames supported a substantial eel fishery well into the nineteenth century, and eels were among the cheapest animal protein available in the capital, sold stewed or jellied from street stalls and baked into pies in riverside inns. Richmond is often said to have lent its name to a grander version of the dish, enriched with sherry, mushrooms and lemon in the manner of a fashionable made dish rather than a poor man's supper; Eel Pie Island at nearby Twickenham, long a resort for day-trippers from London, is traditionally traced to the same trade. The recipe demonstrates a standard method: part-cook in a seasoned stock, remove the fish, reduce and bind the liquor separately, then reunite them under a crust. The suggestion that it be served hot or cold reflects how heavily thickened sauces were used to make a pie portable and sliceable, a habit of the picnic and cold-table era rather than of the dinner service.