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Bouquet Garni (Few pieces of Carrot Turnip)
A few pieces of Carrot, Turnip, Onion, and half a basket of Mushrooms; Stalks and trimmings to be used with the Vegetables. Salt. Half a pint of Brown Sauce.
A teaspoonful of Anchovy Sauce.
Cut up the eels, and cook them for about half an hour in the claret, stock and vegetables; when cooked take out the fish, strain the stock and reduce, then add the brown sauce and anchovy sauce. Extract the juice from half a basket of mushrooms by cooking them in butter and lemonjuice, add this to the stock and sauce, then put the eels in to get hot through. Cook some button onions in some stock and butter for two and a half hours in the oven; serve these with the eels.
A Victorian eel matelote: eel simmered in claret with vegetables, finished with brown sauce, anchovy and mushroom liquor, and garnished with slow-cooked button onions. The ingredient list has lost its opening line, so the quantities of eel, claret and stock are not stated; work from the weight of fish you have.
- ProportionsThe ingredient list has lost its opening line, so the quantities of eel, claret and stock are not stated and no proportion can be recovered from the text. The half pint of brown sauce is the finishing quantity; the body of the sauce comes from reducing the cooking liquor.
- ClaretClaret here means dry red Bordeaux. Any dry, moderately tannic red works; avoid anything oaky or sweet, since the liquid is reduced hard and faults concentrate.
- Brown sauceThis means espagnole or a good demi-glace, not bottled brown table sauce. A reduced brown stock thickened lightly with roux is the intended article.
- Anchovy sauceA thin bottled anchovy condiment of the period. About a teaspoon of anchovy paste, or a few drops of colatura, stands in for it; the recipe adds it to the reduced stock with the brown sauce.
- Half a basket of mushroomsBaskets of the period were not a standard measure; if one is taken as about half a pound, that gives roughly 4 oz for the stock vegetables and another 4 oz for the mushroom liquor. Sweat the second batch in butter with a squeeze of lemon and strain the juices in.
- Button onions in the ovenThe recipe specifies only 'the oven'; two and a half hours implies a slow one. Keep the onions barely covered in stock and butter with the dish lidded. They should be translucent and glazed, not coloured.
- Eel timingThirty minutes suits thick cut sections of a large eel. Smaller eel in 2-inch pieces is done in 12 to 15 minutes; lift it out as soon as the flesh leaves the bone, or it shreds when returned to the sauce.
- Handling eelBuy it killed, skinned and cut by the fishmonger if possible. Eel blood contains a protein irritant that is destroyed by cooking, but it is worth rinsing the pieces and washing hands and board before the salad stage of the meal.
- SourcingEuropean eel is now severely depleted and its trade restricted; farmed eel or another anguillid from a managed fishery is the practical option. Firm-fleshed monkfish or conger takes the same treatment if eel is unavailable.
Eel cooked in red wine belongs to the French matelote tradition, a fisherman's stew of freshwater fish braised in wine with onions and mushrooms, and it entered British high-class cookery through the French-trained chefs who ran country-house and club kitchens in the nineteenth century. The construction here is classic French method: cook in the wine, strain, reduce, then bind with an already-made espagnole rather than thickening the braise itself, and add mushroom essence extracted separately so its flavour stays fresh. The anchovy is the British signature on the dish, a survival of the older English habit of sharpening rich brown fish sauces with fermented fish; bottled anchovy sauce was a familiar professional larder item alongside the mushroom ketchup. Eel was still cheap and plentiful in Britain when this book was written, which is why a costly wine braise could be built on it without extravagance.