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Eel Pie

A savory pie with eels, parsley, eschalots, nutmeg, pepper, sea salt, lemon juice, forcemeat, puff pastry, and béchamel sauce or cullis.

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 the eels

  1. Skin and clean the eels, then cut them into 2‑inch pieces.

  2. Mix the eels with chopped parsley, eschalots, grated nutmeg, pepper, coarse sea salt, and lemon juice. Let it sit for 5 minutes.

Assemble and bake

  1. Place a layer of light forcemeat at the bottom of a deep dish.

  2. Arrange the marinated eels over the forcemeat.

  3. Cover the dish with puff pastry and bake at 400 °F (200 °C).

  4. Once baked, add some béchamel sauce or cullis to the pie.

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

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

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

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

  4. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  5. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 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, becoming tender and flavourful as they cook.
Light forcemeat
Forms a moist base layer that cushions the eels under the pastry.
Puff pastry
Forms a crisp, golden, flaky crust that encloses the filling.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich flavour of the eels.
Béchamel sauce or cullis
Adds richness and moisture to the finished pie.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

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