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Eel Patties (Take three medium-sized eels)
Take three medium-sized eels and cut them up into inch pieces; put them in a stewpan, add salt and cover them with cold water; when the water comes to a boil, take them off the fire, wash them in cold water, scrape off any fat that may adhere, return them to the stewpan with just enough water to cover them, and one blade of mace, one bay leaf, a whole pepper, a few sprigs parsley, and one lemon cut into slices; stew gently until the fish will separate from the bone; remove the fish from the broth, pick it into small pieces and set them aside; reduce the broth a little, strain and thicken with flour and butter; return the fish to the broth, simmer a moment, fill your patty shells, and serve.
A creamed eel filling for pastry cases, of the sort a 1900 kitchen turned out for luncheon or a supper table. Almost everything here still works; the fish is the hard part.
- Buy the eel skinned and cleanedThree medium eels means roughly 2 to 2 1/2 lb of dressed fish, which yields something under a pound of picked meat. A fishmonger or Asian market will skin and gut them for you, and it is worth asking; eel skin is tough and the fish is slippery to handle.
- On sourcingAmerican eel is legally sold in the United States, though its stocks are also under pressure; European eel (Anguilla anguilla) is critically endangered and trade in it is restricted. Ask what you are buying rather than assume.
- The blanch is not optionalBringing the eel up in salted water, then washing and scraping it, removes the heavy surface fat and the slick coating, which is plainly what the recipe intends by 'scrape off any fat that may adhere.' Skipping it is likely to leave the filling greasy.
- "A whole pepper"Whole pepper rather than ground; probably a single peppercorn, though the phrasing is indefinite. With a blade of mace, a bay leaf and lemon it is a light court bouillon; four or five peppercorns is closer to modern palates.
- Blade of maceMace is the lacy covering of the nutmeg seed, sold whole as blades or ground. A blade is roughly 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon of the ground spice, added to the broth and strained out.
- Stewing timeTwenty to twenty-five minutes at a bare simmer is usually enough for the flesh to leave the bone. Eel is gelatinous and forgiving, but hard boiling shreds it into threads.
- ThickeningReduce the strained broth to about a cup, then work in a roux of 2 tablespoons butter and 2 tablespoons flour. The broth sets to a near-jelly when cool because of the eel's gelatin, so judge the consistency hot, and keep it loose enough to spoon.
- Patty shellsPuff pastry vol-au-vent cases, baked blind. Frozen puff pastry cut into rounds with a smaller round scored inside gives the same thing. Fill them at the last moment or the pastry softens.
- YieldAbout 2 cups of filling, enough for eight to ten small shells, or four servings as a first course.
Eel was cheap, abundant and unglamorous in nineteenth-century America, taken from rivers and estuaries up and down the Atlantic coast and sold in city markets; putting it in a patty shell is exactly the move a period cookbook makes to lift a poor man's fish onto a lady's luncheon plate. The patty here is the pastry case, from the French pâté, and the technique — blanch, stew in an aromatic broth, pick the meat, thicken the broth, refill — is the same one these books apply to oysters, sweetbreads, lobster and chicken. Its apparent appearance under "Sandwiches" would reflect how loosely such chapters were organized: anything served in or on bread or pastry, for a light meal or a buffet, ended up together. That eels were common enough to be treated as an everyday filling is the real historical point; stocks of both American and European eel have since collapsed, and the fish that once fed the poor is now expensive and closely watched.