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Eel Pie

A pie made with eels, stock, mushroom ketchup, lemon juice, and pastry.

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 ↓

Eel Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA fairly hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare

  1. Clean and skin the eels, then cut them into 2‑inch pieces.

  2. Place the heads, tails, and fins in a saucepan with the stock and simmer for 30 minutes.

  3. Strain and skim the stock well.

Assemble

  1. Layer the eels in a pie dish, seasoning with salt and pepper between layers.

  2. Add the lemon juice and mushroom ketchup to the stock, then pour half of it over the eels.

  3. Cover with pastry and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 1 hour.

  4. Warm the remaining stock and pour it into the pie through a funnel immediately after removing it from the oven.

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. Meat + mushroomtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,423 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Mushroom + lemontop 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 flesh, which becomes tender and rich during baking.
Meat stock
Adds moisture and savoury depth, and forms the sauce inside the pie.
Puff pastry
Forms a crisp, golden, flaky crust that seals the pie.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds concentrated savoury, umami flavour to the stock.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich stock and eels.

The step that matters

Pouring the remaining stock into the baked pie. The stock must be hot and added right after baking so the pastry stays crisp and the liquid fills the pie. Pouring cold stock would cool the filling and leave gaps once it sets.

Swap the lemon

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