Skip to main content
Main

Eel Pie

A pie made with eels simmered in stock, seasoned with pepper, salt, lemon juice, and mushroom ketchup, topped with crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Eel Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eels

  1. Cut the eels into pieces 2 to 3 inches long and remove the heads and tails.

Make the sauce

  1. Stew the eel pieces in the meat stock until thoroughly cooked.

  2. Strain out the heads and tails from the stock.

  3. Mix pepper, salt, lemon juice, and mushroom ketchup into the stock.

Assemble and bake

  1. Place the eel pieces in a pie dish and pour the sauce over them.

  2. Cover with a pie crust.

  3. Bake until golden.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Meat + mushroomtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,423 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + mushroomtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Mushroom + ketchuptop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Eels
Provide the main protein and meaty, rich flavour that the pie is built around.
Meat stock
Cooks the eels and forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding savoury depth and moisture.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds concentrated savoury, umami flavour to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich flavours of the stock and eels.

The step that matters

Stew the eels until thoroughly cooked. Eel must be cooked through before baking, since the crust only browns the top and the pie is not cooked long enough inside to fully set the fish. Stewing in stock ensures the flesh is tender and safe to eat.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, pepper, mushroom, ketchup):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Red currantfits less well
  4. Avocadofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, pepper, mushroom, ketchup. 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesMushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesMeat CroquettesMeat Croquettes52 recipesMeatballsMeatballs37 recipes