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Sweet Herbs
One blade of Mace.
Twelve whole Peppers.
Salt. One ounce of Butter.
Half an ounce of Flour.
Chop up the onion and fry it a nice brown, with the herbs and the flour, in the butter; then stir in the peppers, the mace, a pinch of salt, and the stock. Cut the eel up into pieces and add it; let it stew slowly till the fish is cooked-about half an hour. Take out the fish with a slice; put it on a hot dish in the oven while you finish the Add the ketchup to the sauce; let it boil sauce. up quickly, strain it over the eel, and serve.
This page has been garbled in setting: the ingredient list is missing its opening lines (the eel, onion, sweet herbs, stock and ketchup all appear in the method but were never listed), and one sentence has had its clauses transposed. What survives is a straightforward brown stew of eel, and it can be reconstructed with confidence.
- Read the scrambled sentence in order"...while you finish the Add the ketchup to the sauce; let it boil sauce." is two lines mis-set. It should read: put the fish on a hot dish in the oven while you finish the sauce. Add the ketchup to the sauce; let it boil up quickly.
- The missing quantitiesFor 1 oz butter and 1/2 oz flour, the working proportions are about 2 lb eel, one medium onion, roughly 3/4 pint (about 15 fl oz) of fish or veal stock, and a tablespoon of ketchup. Treat these as a reconstruction, not as the author's own figures.
- Sweet herbsCommonly parsley, thyme and marjoram, often with a bay leaf, though the mixture varied from book to book. They can be chopped fine here, as they are fried with the onion and flour; the sauce is strained at the end in any case.
- Ketchup means mushroom or walnutIn a British book of this period ketchup is the thin, dark, salty mushroom or walnut liquor used as a savoury seasoning. Tomato ketchup will sugar the sauce and is not what is meant; a splash of mushroom ketchup or, failing that, Worcestershire sauce keeps the intent.
- Whole peppers and a blade of maceTwelve whole peppercorns and one blade of mace, the outer casing of nutmeg. Tie both in muslin so they can be pulled out before straining, or expect to fish them from the sieve. A quarter teaspoon of ground mace is a fair substitute.
- The hinge: keep it at a bare simmer"Stew slowly" is doing real work. Eel is a rich, gelatinous fish that holds its shape well but shreds off the bone if the liquid rolls; hold it just below a simmer and half an hour is right for thick cut pieces. Only the finished sauce, with the fish removed, gets boiled hard.
- Buying eelEuropean eel is critically endangered and trade in it is restricted; much of what is sold now is farmed, often Japanese eel. Check the source with your fishmonger, have it skinned and cut into two-inch lengths, and cook it the day you buy it.
- Brown the roux properly"Fry it a nice brown" applies to the onion, herbs and flour together. Take the flour to the colour of weak coffee over moderate heat before the stock goes in, or the sauce will taste raw and pale.
- YieldOn the reconstructed quantities above, about four servings as a main course with plain boiled or mashed potatoes to take the sauce.
Eel was a cheap and widely eaten fish in nineteenth-century Britain, taken from rivers including the Thames and the Severn and often kept alive by sellers until sold, and it lies behind the London eel-pie-and-mash shops. That a book calling itself High-Class Cookery Recipes includes a stewed eel suggests that "high-class" here had as much to do with careful method as with costly material: the roux browned to a proper colour, the mace and whole peppercorns, the sauce strained and finished separately while the fish waits in the oven. The mushroom or walnut ketchup called for here is the older sense of the word, a spiced, salty bottled liquor that served as a savoury seasoning long before tomato ketchup took over the name; recipe books of the period often gave instructions for making it at home in large quantities. Modern cooks meet the reverse problem to the author's: the seasoning is easy and the eel, once cheap, is now the difficulty.