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Eel Pie

A savory pie of eels and fish baked in pastry with a buttery gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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. Cut the eels into 2-3 inch lengths and season with salt and pepper.

  2. Place the eels in a pie dish, dot with butter, and add a little water.

  3. Cover the dish with pastry.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, boil the eels until cooked, then remove the flesh and discard the bones.

  2. In the boiling liquid, add mace, pepper, salt, and a slice of onion; boil until rich and strain.

  3. Make a forcemeat with the eel flesh, anchovy, parsley, lemon peel, salt, pepper, breadcrumbs, and warmed butter.

  4. Spread the forcemeat at the bottom of the dish.

Assemble and bake

  1. Layer the fish on top, season with salt and pepper, pour the gravy over, and bake until golden.

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. Anchovy + saucetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Pasta + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together732 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Eels
Provide the main flesh, which is flaked into the forcemeat and layered on top of the pie.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the forcemeat and enriches the dish with fat.
Breadcrumbs
Bind the forcemeat so it holds together and stays moist when baked.
Anchovy
Adds savoury depth and a salty, umami note to the forcemeat.
Lemon peel
Adds bright aromatic oils that lift the richness of the fish and butter.

The step that matters

Boil the eels until just cooked, then flake the flesh. Overcooked eel becomes dry and tough, while undercooked flesh will not separate cleanly from the bones. Gentle, timed boiling keeps the flesh moist for the forcemeat.

“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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