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Stewed Eels
Ingredients.
One pound of Eels.
Half a pint of Stock.
One dessertspoonful of Mushroom Ketchup.
The entry is a demonstration-school ingredient list with the method left to the instructor, so the working details have to be supplied. Everything here turns on gentle heat: eel is a fatty, gelatinous fish that turns to threads if it is boiled hard.
- No method givenThe entry gives quantities only. A workable procedure: the eel is skinned, cut into two-inch lengths, laid in a shallow pan with the stock, and barely simmered under a lid for 20 to 25 minutes until the flesh loosens from the backbone; the ketchup goes in near the end and the liquor is reduced to a scant sauce.
- Half a pintA British imperial half-pint is 10 fl oz, about 1¼ US cups. It will not cover a pound of eel in most pans, which suggests a shallow stew reduced to a glaze rather than a poach.
- DessertspoonfulTwo teaspoons. Mushroom ketchup is strongly salted, so season the stock only after it has reduced.
- Mushroom ketchupThe Victorian ketchup: a thin, near-black, salty liquor pressed from salted mushrooms, closer to a mushroom soy than to anything tomato. It is still made commercially in Britain; failing that, a mixture of dark soy and a little Worcestershire gives a similar savoury depth, though not the same mushroom note.
- StockThe unspecified stock is best read as a light fish or veal stock rather than a heavy brown one. Eel is rich on its own; the stock carries the ketchup and picks up gelatine from the bones.
- Buying and preparing eelAsk for it killed, skinned and cut at the fishmonger. Eel skin is tough and does not soften in a stew, and the flesh keeps its shape best when the pieces are left on the bone. European eel is now a threatened species and its trade is restricted; farmed eel or American eel is the practical substitute.
- Eel bloodRaw eel serum contains a protein toxin that irritates skin and eyes. It is destroyed by heat and is no concern in a cooked dish, but wash hands and board after handling, and keep raw eel away from cuts.
- YieldOne pound of eel on the bone is two modest portions. Serve with the reduced liquor spooned over, and plain boiled potatoes or bread to take up the sauce.
Eel was a staple of British fish cookery long before it became a curiosity: cheap, abundant in the Thames and the fen rivers, and sold stewed or jellied from London street stalls well into the twentieth century. Its appearance in a "high class cookery" book — the genre of training manuals produced by the cookery schools that spread through Britain in the late nineteenth century — shows the dish moving up the table, dressed with stock and ketchup rather than boiled in its own liquor. Mushroom ketchup dates the entry as much as the eel does: before tomato ketchup took the name for itself, "ketchup" in an English kitchen meant a salted, fermented liquor of mushrooms or walnuts, kept in a bottle and used by the spoonful as a savoury seasoning much as cooks now use soy or Worcestershire sauce.