No. 1151

Eels, Fried with Butter and Fine Herbs

Anguilles Frites au Beurre et aux Fines Herbs

Having cleaned some small eels, season with salt and pepper; roll them in flour, and fry slowly in butter; when done, dress and pour over the butter in which they were cooked. Bestrew over with finely cut-up chives and chopped parsley, squeeze over the juice of a lemon, and surround with a border of very thin slices of lemon, laying a bunch of parsley on top.

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For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

A very short French preparation from Ranhofer's The Epicurean: floured eel cooked gently in butter, finished with the pan butter, herbs and lemon. Nearly everything depends on the skinning and on keeping the heat low.

Fry slowly, and mean itEel is fatty and dense; over high heat the outside colors long before the flesh cooks through. Keep the butter at a steady foam rather than a sizzle, allow roughly 8-12 minutes for small eels, turning once, and expect the flesh to pull cleanly from the backbone when done.
"Having cleaned some small eels"This assumes work the modern cook rarely does: gutting, and skinning, which is easiest by nicking the skin behind the head and peeling it back with a cloth or pliers. Ask the fishmonger to do it. Small eels means slim ones, under about a pound; larger eels are better braised or smoked.
Raw eel bloodEel serum contains a protein toxin that irritates mucous membranes and can be dangerous in a cut. Cooking destroys it completely, so the finished dish is harmless, but wash hands, board and knife after handling and do not taste anything raw.
Fines herbes hereRanhofer's list is only chives and parsley, added off the heat as a garnish. Classic fines herbes also includes chervil and tarragon; either works, but add them at the end so they do not brown in the butter.
The pan butter is the sauceThere is no other sauce, so use enough butter to film the pan generously and do not let it pass beyond nut-brown. If it darkens, pour it off and swirl fresh butter in the hot pan before saucing.
Flour and salt timingSeason the eel, then flour it immediately before it goes into the pan. Floured fish left to stand goes damp and gummy and will not take color.
SourcingEuropean eel is critically endangered and trade in it is restricted; American eel stocks are also depleted. Buy from a fishmonger who can say where the eel came from, or substitute another firm, oily fish for the same treatment.
YieldThe original gives none. Figure about 6 oz of cleaned eel per person as a first course, 8-10 oz as a main, and fry in batches rather than crowding the pan.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially the restaurant's working repertoire written out in the French manner, each dish numbered and given a French title alongside the English. Fried eel with butter and herbs is one of the plainest entries in the freshwater fish chapter, and it survives in the book because eel was then a genuinely common market fish on the Atlantic seaboard: caught in tidal rivers and estuaries, sold cheap and live, and eaten widely by immigrant communities as well as in dining rooms of this rank. The elaborate finish - lemon slices around the edge, a bunch of parsley on top - is pure nineteenth-century service, where a dish was expected to be dressed on the platter before it left the kitchen rather than plated per guest. Eel has since largely dropped out of American cooking, partly through changing taste and partly because both the European and American species have collapsed in numbers over the last century.