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Eel Pie

A savory pie made with eels, seasoned, topped with a thickened gravy, baked until cooked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Eel Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the eels

  1. Remove the skin, heads, tails, and fins from the eels, then clean them.

  2. Cut the eels into pieces and place them in a pie dish, seasoning with pepper and salt.

Make the gravy

  1. Make a gravy by boiling the heads, tails, and fins in water with pepper and salt for 30 minutes.

  2. Strain the gravy, let it cool, then thicken it with flour.

  3. Pour the gravy over the eel pieces in the pie dish.

Bake

  1. Cover the dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for about 1 hour.

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

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

  2. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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, which becomes tender and flaky as the pie bakes.
Flour
Thickens the cooled gravy so it clings to the eel pieces rather than running off.
Water
Serves as the base for the gravy, extracting flavour from the heads, tails, and fins.

The step that matters

Thicken the gravy after straining and cooling. Flour thickens liquid only when it is mixed in well and the gravy is cooled enough to hold it. Adding flour to hot or unstrained liquid can clump or leave the gravy thin, so the sauce will not coat the eels properly.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Jalapenofits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Marjoramfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, pepper. 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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