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Pepper and Salt (One tablespoonful of Lemon)
One tablespoonful of Lemon Juice.
Two tablespoonfuls of Mushroom Ketchup.
Cut up the eels into pieces between two and three inches long. Cut off the heads and tails and stew them in half a pint of meat stock. Strain out the heads and tails when they are thoroughly cooked, and mix into the stock a little pepper and salt, a tablespoonful of lemon-juice, and two tablespoonfuls of mushroom ketchup. Put the pieces of eel into a pie-dish, pour in this sauce, cover with a good crust, and bake.
This is an eel pie, and the printed title is simply the first line of the ingredient list running on from the previous page — the recipe assumes you already have eels in hand. The one thing to get right is the stock: the heads and tails are the only source of body in the sauce, so they need a proper simmer before straining.
- Eel, and where to get itEuropean eel is critically endangered and CITES-listed, and trade in it is restricted; farmed Japanese and American eel are also widely sold, and what your fishmonger stocks will depend on where you are. Ask the fishmonger to skin and cut it — the skin is tough and slippery, and eel is best handled by someone with a firm grip and a sharp knife.
- QuantitiesHalf a pint of meat stock is 10 fl oz in British measure, a little under 1 1/4 cups. The recipe gives no weight of eel; the stock, lemon juice and ketchup would suit roughly 1 1/2 to 2 lb of trimmed eel in a standard pie dish, enough for about four.
- Mushroom ketchupNot tomato ketchup. Mushroom ketchup is a thin, dark, salty mushroom liquor, still made commercially in Britain; a mushroom soy or a strong mushroom essence gives the same savoury depth. Two tablespoons is a seasoning, not a sauce base.
- Stewing the heads and tailsGive them 30 to 40 minutes at a bare simmer, then strain through a fine sieve. Eel is gelatinous, so the strained stock will set to a light jelly when cold — that is what thickens the pie filling as it bakes, and why no flour is called for.
- The crust"A good crust" is not specified; a shortcrust or rough puff laid over the filled dish, with the edge sealed to the rim, suits it. Cut a vent, or the eel stock will lift the pastry and run out.
- OvenThe recipe says only "bake". A hot start of around 400F for about 20 minutes to set and colour the pastry, then 350F for a further 30 to 35 minutes, works. The eel wants long enough for the flesh to come away from the bone; underdone eel is unpleasantly firm.
- ServingEel is very rich. Serve it plain, hot or cold, with something sharp alongside — the tablespoon of lemon juice in the sauce is there for the same reason and should not be omitted.
Eel pie was cheap London food long before it was a cookery-book dish: eels came up the Thames in quantity, survived transport alive in barrels, and were sold from stalls and later from the eel-and-pie shops of the East End. Its appearance in a book of "high class" recipes shows the dish moving up the table — the mushroom ketchup and lemon juice are the genteel touches, ketchup of this kind being a standard Victorian store-cupboard seasoning made by salting mushrooms and straining off the black liquor, used much as cooks now use Worcestershire sauce. The heavy reliance on the head-and-tail stock reflects a kitchen that wasted nothing and understood that eel trimmings set to jelly on their own, needing no flour or arrowroot. Eel is far less common now for reasons the Victorians would not have imagined: the European eel's life cycle depends on a long migration to the Sargasso Sea, and its collapse has made a once-plentiful fish a restricted one.