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Eel Pie

A pie made with eels, pepper, salt, sage, and a puff pastry lid.

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 the eels

  1. Cut the cleaned eels into pieces about 1.5 inches long.

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

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

Bake

  1. Make a puff pastry.

  2. Cover the dish with the puff pastry.

  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, becoming tender as they cook in the water.
Puff pastry
Forms a flaky lid that browns in the oven and seals in the filling.
Dried sage
Adds an earthy, aromatic flavour that complements the fish.

The step that matters

Covering and baking the dish. The pastry lid must seal the dish fully so steam stays in and the eels cook gently, while the oven heat browns the crust evenly.

“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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