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Eel Pie

A savory pie made with eels, parsley, shallot, lemon juice, Béchamel sauce, and puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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

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

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

Assemble

  1. Place the eel pieces on top of the forcemeat.

  2. Sprinkle with chopped parsley, shallot, salt, pepper, and lemon juice.

  3. Pour Béchamel sauce over the eels.

  4. Cover with puff pastry and seal the edges.

Bake

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 400 °F (200 °C) until golden brown.

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. Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Eels
Form the main filling and provide the dish's central flavor and texture.
Béchamel sauce
Adds creamy moisture that keeps the filling from drying out during baking.
Forcemeat
Forms a seasoned base layer under the eels that adds richness and flavor.
Puff pastry
Forms a flaky, golden crust that seals in the filling as it bakes.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and forcemeat.

The step that matters

Sealing the pastry edges. A poor seal lets the sauce and juices escape during baking, leaving the filling dry and the crust soggy underneath. Pressing the edges firmly keeps steam and moisture inside the pie.

Swap the shallot

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

  1. Shallotthe original
  2. Carrotfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Spinachfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, 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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