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Eel Pie

A savory pie made with eels, puff pastry, and a sauce of eel trimmings simmered in veal stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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

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 the eels

  1. Skin, wash, and trim the eels, cutting them into 3-inch pieces.

  2. Season the eels with pepper and salt, and place them in a dish, omitting the heads and tails.

  3. Add ½ cup of water or veal broth.

Make the sauce

  1. The sauce is made by boiling the trimmings in veal stock.

  2. Season the sauce with pepper, salt, and lemon juice.

  3. Thicken the sauce with flour and water.

Assemble and bake

  1. Cover with puff pastry, brush with egg yolk, and decorate with pastry scraps.

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

  3. Make a hole in the center of the pie.

  4. Pour the sauce into the hole.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Veal + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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, which becomes tender and flavorful as it cooks in the pie.
Puff pastry
Forms a flaky, crisp crust that encloses the filling and browns in the oven.
Egg yolk
Brushed on the pastry to promote even browning and a glossy finish.
Veal stock
Builds the savory body of the sauce, adding depth from the boiled eel trimmings.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it holds together rather than running out of the pie.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich eel and sauce flavors.

The step that matters

Thicken the sauce with flour and water. Flour must be mixed smoothly with water before it is stirred into hot liquid, otherwise it clumps. Thickening then gives the sauce body so it stays in the pie when poured in.

“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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