Skip to main content
Main

Eel Pie

A pie made with eels, bread crumbs, herbs, and beef gravy, topped with puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Marjoram and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,979 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Eel Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eels

  1. Clean, skin, and bone the eels.

  2. Lay each eel on a board, securing with two forks, one in the head and one in the tail.

  3. Open the eel down the back and remove the bone without cutting through the flesh.

  4. Cut off the heads and tails and set them aside.

Fill and make the gravy

  1. In a bowl, mix bread crumbs, sweet marjoram, parsley, pepper, salt, and mace.

  2. Strew the mixture over the eels, roll them into a circle, and place them in a dish.

  3. In a saucepan, combine the heads and tails with beef gravy and season.

  4. Let it simmer for a while, then strain into the dish.

Bake

  1. Once cooled, cover with a thick layer of puff pastry and bake as you would for other pies.

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. Marjoram + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Marjoram + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Marjoram + macetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together767 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Fine eels
Form the main filling, providing the flesh that is rolled and baked.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and bind the herb seasoning into the filling.
Beef gravy
Adds savoury moisture and body to the dish once strained into it.
Puff pastry for crust
Forms a flaky, golden crust that encloses the filling as it bakes.

The step that matters

Let the filling cool before adding the pastry. Pastry placed on hot filling can melt and turn greasy before it sets, so the crust rises poorly and bakes unevenly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, marjoram, parsley, pepper, beef):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, marjoram, parsley, pepper, beef. 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipes