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Eel Pie

A pie of eel and fish with asparagus, artichokes, mushrooms, crawfish, topped with pastry and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Asparagus and artichoke match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 165 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Eel Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the eel

  1. Skin the eel and remove the bones from the sides.

  2. Suspend the eel in the air for a few hours.

  3. Cut the eel into pieces and season well.

Make the filling

  1. Chop the flesh of carp and other fish finely, seasoning with salt, pepper, suet, fine spices, and parsley.

  2. Roll out the pastry and spread half of the fish mixture over it.

  3. Place the pieces of eel on top and fill the spaces with asparagus tops, artichoke bottoms, mushrooms, and crawfish tails.

  4. Cover with the remaining fish mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Dot with butter or slices of fat meat and cover with a pastry crust.

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until cooked through and serve hot with a suitable sauce.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Asparagus + artichoketop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together165 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Parsley + artichoketop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together524 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Asparagus + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together400 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eel
Forms the meaty centre of the pie, giving the dish its main flavour and substance.
Carp flesh
Chopped fine, it binds with suet to form a moist, cohesive filling around the eel.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the fish filling moist and rich during baking.
Pastry
Encloses the filling, forming a crisp, browned case that holds everything together.
Butter or fat meat
Dotted over the top, it melts during baking to moisten the filling and brown the crust.

The step that matters

Cut the eel into pieces and season well. Seasoning must reach the thick eel pieces, since the filling is only lightly seasoned around them. Under-seasoned fish tastes flat after baking, and the pieces need even seasoning so the pie is cooked through evenly.

Swap the asparagus

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, parsley, fish, butter, artichoke, mushroom):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Spinachfits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Asparagusthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, parsley, fish, butter, artichoke, mushroom. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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