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Dressed Fish

A pie of eels baked with a lemon and mushroom ketchup sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 ↓

Dressed Fish

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the eels

  1. Cut the eels into pieces between 2 and 3 inches long, then remove the heads and tails.

  2. Stew the heads and tails in ½ pint of meat stock until thoroughly cooked.

  3. Strain out the heads and tails.

Make the sauce

  1. Mix the stock with pepper, salt, lemon juice, and mushroom ketchup.

Assemble and bake

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

  2. Cover with pie crust and bake at 400°F (200°C) 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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

  3. Mushroom + meattop 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 meat, which turns tender and flaky when cooked in the sauce.
Meat stock
Carries the flavour of the stewed heads and tails and forms the body of the sauce.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds deep savoury, umami flavour to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, savoury sauce.
Pie crust
Encloses the filling and browns in the oven to form a golden top.

The step that matters

Stew the heads and tails until thoroughly cooked. Heads and tails hold collagen and bones that only release gelatin and flavour after long, thorough stewing. Undercooked scraps leave the stock thin and bitter, and straining needs to wait until they are fully done.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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