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Eel Pie

A pie made with eels, parsley, shallot, nutmeg, pepper, salt, lemon juice, forcemeat, gravy, and 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

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

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

Assemble and bake

  1. Place the eels in the dish and sprinkle with parsley, shallot, nutmeg, pepper, salt, and lemon juice.

  2. Cover with puff pastry.

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

Serve

  1. Heat the gravy, pour it into the pie, and serve.

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 filling, cooking to tender flaky pieces under the pastry.
Forcemeat
Lines the dish beneath the eels, adding a savoury, rich base to the filling.
Puff pastry
Forms a crisp, golden, flaky crust that seals the pie during baking.
Gravy
Adds moisture and savoury depth once poured into the baked pie.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich eel and gravy flavours.

The step that matters

Bake for 1 hour at 400°F (200°C). Eels must cook through fully while the pastry browns and sets; too low a heat leaves the fish underdone and the crust pale and soggy.

Swap the shallot

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

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

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