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Eel Pie

A pie made with eels, pepper, salt, dried sage, water, and puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 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. Cut the cleaned eels into pieces about 1.5 inches long.

  2. Season the eels with pepper, salt, and dried sage.

Assemble and bake

  1. Place the eels in a dish and add enough water to just cover them.

  2. Make a puff pastry and cover the dish with it.

  3. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until the crust is golden and cooked through.

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. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eels
Provide the main filling, cooking gently in the water beneath the pastry.
Puff pastry
Forms a crisp, golden crust that browns in the hot oven and seals the dish.
Dried sage
Adds a savoury, aromatic flavour to the eels.

The step that matters

Covering the dish with pastry. The pastry must seal the dish well so steam stays inside and cooks the eels while the crust browns. A loose or gapped cover lets steam escape, so the filling can dry or cook unevenly.

“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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