Eels en Matelote
INGREDIENTS for dish for 6 persons.-2 lbs. of eels, 5 or 6 young onions, a few mushrooms, when obtainable; salt, pepper and nutmeg to taste; 1 laurel leaf, 1/2 pint of port wine, 1/2 pint of medium stock, butter and flour to thicken. AVERAGE COST, 38. INGREDIENTS for dish for 6 persons.—2 lbs. of eels, 5 or 6 young onions, a few mushrooms, when obtainable; salt, pepper and nutmeg to taste; 1 laurel leaf, 1/2 pint of port wine, 1/2 pint of medium stock, butter and flour to thicken. AVERAGE COST, 3s.
Rub the stewpan with butter, dredge in a little flour, add the onions cut very small, slightly brown them, and put in all the other ingredients. Wash and cut up the eels into pieces 3 inches long; put them in the stewpan and simmer for 1/2 hour. Make round the dish a border of croûtons; arrange the eels in a pyramid in the centre, and pour over the sauce. very hot.
TIME. hour.
SEASONABLE from August to March.
The text has come through the scanner with the ingredient list partly duplicated and the timing line lost; read it as 2 lb eel, aromatics, half a pint each of port and stock, thickened with butter and flour, simmered half an hour. It is a matelote in the older sense: a fish stew whose liquid becomes its sauce.
- The hinge: the sauce is the dishThe flour dredged into the buttered pan is the whole thickening plan, and it is easy to end up with a thin, boozy broth. Cook the onions in the butter and flour until the roux smells nutty before the liquid goes in, and if the sauce is still loose after half an hour, lift the eel out and reduce hard, or whisk in a little kneaded butter and flour off the boil.
- Port and stockHalf a pint each in imperial measure is 10 fl oz, so about 1 1/4 US cups of each. Use a ruby port rather than a tawny, and a light veal or chicken stock; "medium stock" in Beeton is one of her own stock recipes, a light meat stock rather than a dark reduction. A fish stock made from the eel trimmings is closer to the French original and less sweet in the finished sauce.
- Laurel leafA bay leaf. One is right for this quantity; bay in port reduction turns medicinal quickly if overdone.
- Buying and preparing the eelAsk for it killed, skinned and gutted, cut into 3 in lengths. Eel is slippery and firm-boned, and the skin will not come away easily at home without a nail through the head and a good grip. Rinse the pieces well, since the flesh carries a slick coating that clouds the sauce.
- TimingThirty minutes at a bare simmer suits thick 3 in sections of a large eel. Smaller, thinner pieces are done in 12 to 15 minutes and will fall off the bone if held longer, so check at that point and hold them warm while the sauce finishes.
- SourcingThe European eel is now listed under CITES and its stocks are severely depleted; wild-caught elvers and eel are restricted or unavailable in much of Europe. Farmed eel, or a firm-fleshed alternative such as monkfish or conger, will behave much the same in this sauce.
- CroutonsBeeton means triangles or crescents of bread fried in butter until crisp, stood around the rim of the dish, not diced salad croutons. Fry them at the last minute; they soften within a few minutes of touching the sauce.
- Yield and costSix portions as written, though 2 lb of eel on the bone serves four generously as a main course. "Average cost, 3s." is three shillings for the whole dish.
Matelote comes from the French matelot, sailor, and denotes a freshwater fish stew built on wine, onions and a thickened sauce something a boatman might make from what came out of the river. The classic versions use red wine or, on the Loire and in Anjou, local white; Beeton's substitution of port is characteristically English and Victorian. Eel earned its place in a book of this kind because it was cheap, abundant in the Thames and the fen rivers, and sold live from tanks by street fishmongers well into the twentieth century. The pyramid of fish ringed with fried croutons is standard mid-Victorian service: dishes were built up and garnished for the table, not plated individually.