Eels, Fried
INGREDIENTS for dish sufficient for 2 or 3 persons.-1 lb. of eels, 1 egg, a few bread-crumbs, hot lard. AVERAGE COST, 1s.
EELS, STEWED.
Wash the eels, cut them into pieces 3 inches long, trim and wipe them very dry; dredge with flour, rub them over with egg, FRIED EELS. and cover with bread-crumbs; fry a nice brown in hot lard. If the eels are small, curl them round, instead of cutting them up. Garnish with fried parsley.
TIME.-20 minutes, or rather less.
SEASONABLE from June to March.
The text as printed here is scrambled by the typesetting of the original page: the tail of a stewed-eel recipe and the heading "EELS, STEWED" have drifted into the middle of the frying instructions. Ignore the stock, butter and flour in the first line — the fried recipe needs only eel, egg, crumbs and lard.
- What you actually need1 lb eel, 1 egg beaten, fine dry breadcrumbs, and lard for frying, enough to serve two or three as a course. The flour dredge before the egg is the part cooks skip and shouldn't; it gives the egg something to grip on wet fish.
- Hot lard, and how hotDeep or shallow fry at 350–375F. Below that the crumb soaks; above it the coating colours before the flesh sets. Eel is fatty enough that it fries cleanly and does not need a heavy batter.
- The 20 minutesThat is the whole operation, not the time per piece. Three-inch pieces of eel take roughly 4–5 minutes a side to reach a firm, opaque centre; work in batches so the fat does not drop in temperature.
- Cook it throughEel serum contains a protein toxin that is destroyed by heat, so eel is never eaten rare or lightly cured at home. Fry until the flesh is opaque to the bone and the coating is well browned.
- Skinning and dryingThe recipe begins simply with "wash the eels" and says nothing about killing or skinning, so buy it cleaned and cut. The instruction to "wipe them very dry" is the hinge of the recipe — eel is slippery and moist, and any surface water lifts the crumbs off in the fat.
- Curling the small onesThe book says only to curl small eels round instead of cutting them up. A curled eel will tend to unwind in the pan unless you run a cocktail stick or short skewer through it.
- Fried parsleyWhole dry sprigs of curly parsley dropped into the same fat for 10–15 seconds, then drained. It must be bone dry or the fat will spit violently.
- SourcingThe European eel is now critically endangered and trade in it is restricted; wild-caught eel is not a casual purchase. Farmed or responsibly sourced eel, or a firm oily fish cut into 3-inch pieces, will take the same treatment.
- "Average cost, 1s." and the seasonThe shilling is the average cost given for the whole dish serving two or three, not a price per pound of eel. The June to March season presumably reflects availability rather than any quality of the flesh.
Eel was one of the great cheap foods of London when Beeton was compiling her book: the Dutch eel ships moored at Billingsgate supplied a trade that fed the eel-and-pie shops of the East End, and the fish's ability to survive out of water for hours made it saleable in a city without refrigeration. That abundance is why she gives eels a whole run of entries — stewed, fried, boiled, spitchcocked, in soup. Farmed eel is now a luxury item and the wild European eel is in steep decline, a reversal that makes this the rare Victorian economy dish that has become expensive.