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Eels in Matelote
Skin two pounds of very fresh eels, cut the heads off, thoroughly wipe, cut into two-inch-long pieces and keep on a plate.
Heat two tablespoons lard in a saucepan, add twelve very small peeled onions, one bean sound garlic, and brown them for ten minutes, lightly stirring once in a while; besprinkle with two tablespoons flour, stir well, brown for five minutes, and moisten with a half pint claret. Tie together two branches parsley, one branch chives, one bay leaf, one clove, a sprig thyme and add to the pan; mix a little and let boil for ten minutes. Add the fish with twelve canned mushrooms, mix a little, cover the pan and let simmer for forty minutes. Take up the bouquet of herbs and garlic, pour into a hot, deep dish, sprinkle a little freshly chopped parsley over arrange six heart-shaped croutons around and serve.
A classic French freshwater stew scaled for a home saucepan. Most of what needs translating here is vocabulary rather than technique, but the cooking time is worth reconsidering.
- "One bean sound garlic"This is a single sound (unblemished) clove of garlic, left whole so it can be lifted out with the herb bouquet at the end. The "one clove" listed among the herbs is the spice, a whole clove-head.
- Half pint claretOne cup of dry red Bordeaux, or any dry, tannic red. Claret was the standard English term for red Bordeaux, though by this period the word was often used loosely for red table wine in general.
- Cut the time downConsider the time -- Forty minutes is long for two-inch pieces of eel, though eel is fatty and holds together better than most fish. Fifteen to twenty minutes at a bare simmer will usually be enough, the flesh just coming away from the bone. Build the sauce first, as written, then add the fish.
- Canned mushroomsReadily available at the time, and worth replacing with a dozen small button or cremini mushrooms, quartered if large. Brown them separately in a little butter and add with the fish, or they will leach water into the sauce.
- Buying and skinningAsk the fishmonger to skin and section the eel; it is a slippery, physical job at home and the skin is tough enough to need a nail or a cloth to grip. Eel blood contains a protein toxin that is destroyed by heat, so nothing raw should be tasted, but cooked eel poses no issue.
- SourcingEuropean eel is listed under CITES and its trade is heavily restricted; farmed Japanese or American eel is what is generally available. Substituting a firm fish such as monkfish, or using conger, changes the dish but survives the braise.
- Heart-shaped croutonsTriangles or pointed wedges of white bread fried in butter until crisp, set point-outward around the dish. They are structural as much as decorative, meant to be dipped in the thickened wine sauce.
- YieldTwo pounds of eel with the sauce will serve about four as a main course, or six as a first course; the recipe's six croutons suggest six portions.
Matelote means "sailor's style," from matelot, and in French cooking it denotes a freshwater fish stew braised in wine with onions, mushrooms and a herb bouquet — the same architecture as a coq au vin or a boeuf bourguignon, applied to what came out of the river. Eel was the classic subject, being cheap, abundant in the Loire, Seine and Marne, and fatty enough to hold together in a long braise where a leaner fish would collapse. Versions were regional: red wine in Burgundy and Touraine, white in Normandy, cider in some Norman variants. Its appearance in an American "international" collection reflects the influence of French professional cookery in the hotel and restaurant kitchens of the period, when a cook expected to know a matelote as a matter of course. Eel itself was still ordinary market fish in New York and the Chesapeake then; a century of habitat loss and dam-building has since turned it into a specialty item.