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Broiled Eels
Skin and clean a good-sized eel; remove the backbone and cut the eel into four or five pieces. Dip each piece first into egg and then into egg and then into breadcrumbs mixed with grated rind of lemon, nutmeg, parsley, sweet herbs, pepper and salt. Put the pieces of fish on a greased gridiron with the skin side of the fish downward, over a clear fire, and broil them, turning over when done on one side. Put on a hot dish, garnish with parsley and horseradish set alternately, and serve with tartar or anchovy sauce in a sauceboat.
A straightforward grill recipe that assumes a live-purchased eel and a bed of hardwood coals. The technique still works; only the sourcing and the fire need translating.
- Sourcing the eelAsk the fishmonger to kill, skin and gut it, and to fillet it off the backbone — the job is unpleasant with a live eel and a domestic knife. Note that the European eel is now CITES-listed and heavily restricted; what you will legally find is farmed Japanese or Asian eel, or American eel, and a fillet or two from a 2-3 lb fish is enough for four.
- Raw eel bloodEel serum contains a protein toxin that irritates on contact with cuts or eyes. It is destroyed by cooking, so the finished dish is harmless, but wash hands, board and knife before handling anything else.
- The doubled line"Dip each piece first into egg and then into egg and then into breadcrumbs" repeats itself, plainly in error. Read it as one pass through beaten egg, then the seasoned crumbs.
- Sweet herbsPeriod shorthand for the mild kitchen herbs: thyme, marjoram, savory, a little tarragon or chervil. A tablespoon of chopped mixed herbs plus the parsley and lemon zest suits a cup of crumbs.
- A clear fireCoals burned down to grey with no flame and no smoke. On a gas grill, medium-high with the grate well oiled; under a domestic broiler, put the pieces about four inches from the element on a greased rack.
- Skin side down firstThe recipe's "skin side downward" survives even though the eel has been skinned; presumably the outer face is the firmer one and holds the crumb while it sets. Turn once only — eel is soft and a breaded piece worked back and forth will shed its coating into the fire.
- TimingFour to six minutes a side for pieces about an inch thick, until the crumbs are deep brown and the flesh flakes at 145F. Eel is fatty enough to forgive a little extra heat but goes dry and stringy if held long on the grill.
- Garnish and sauce"Parsley and horseradish set alternately" means small heaps of picked parsley and freshly grated horseradish arranged around the rim of the platter. Either tartar or anchovy sauce works; the anchovy version is the older pairing and stands up better to the fat of the fish.
Eel was cheap, abundant and ordinary in nineteenth-century American cities — the Hudson, the Delaware and the Chesapeake all supported commercial fisheries, and live eels were sold from tanks in market stalls well into the twentieth century. The broiling method here, with a lemon-and-herb crumb and anchovy sauce, is squarely in the English tradition of dressing an oily fish with something sharp. What has changed is availability: sustained overfishing and the collapse of glass-eel recruitment have made the eel a restricted, largely farmed fish, and a dish that once signified thrift now signifies scarcity.