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Eel Pie

A pie filled with eels, parsley, shallot, nutmeg, pepper, salt, lemon juice, and Bechamel sauce, topped with puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. 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 filling

  1. Skin and wash the eels, then cut them into 2-inch pieces.

  2. Line the bottom of a pie dish with forcemeat.

  3. Place the eel pieces in the dish and sprinkle with parsley, shallot, nutmeg, pepper, salt, and lemon juice.

Bake and serve

  1. Cover the filling with puff pastry.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for about 1 hour.

  3. Heat the Bechamel sauce and pour it into the pie before serving.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eels
Form the main body of the pie and provide its rich, savoury flavour.
Forcemeat
Lines the dish, adding a seasoned meaty layer beneath the eel pieces.
Bechamel sauce
Adds creaminess and moisture to the filling when poured in before serving.
Puff pastry
Encloses the filling and bakes into a flaky, golden crust.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich eel flavour.

The step that matters

Pouring in the Bechamel sauce. The sauce is added after baking, so it should be heated first to avoid cooling the pie. Pouring it in cold can leave the filling lukewarm and dilute the texture.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, shallot, pepper, lemon, sauce):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, shallot, pepper, lemon, sauce. 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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