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To Spitchcock Eels

A method of cooking eels by coating them in egg, breadcrumbs, parsley, and spices, then broiling or frying.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

To Spitchcock Eels

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eels

  1. Clean and skin the eels, then cut them into 3 to 4-inch pieces.

  2. Score the pieces and sprinkle with pepper and coarse sea salt.

Coat the eels

  1. Dip the pieces into a beaten egg.

  2. Coat the pieces with a mixture of grated bread crumbs and chopped parsley.

  3. Season the coated pieces with pepper, salt, and nutmeg.

Cook and serve

  1. Rub a gridiron with a bit of suet.

  2. Broil the eels over a clear fire, or fry them.

  3. Serve with lemon pickle and catsup in melted butter, or with parsley and butter.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 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
Form the main body of the dish, cooked by broiling or frying.
Egg
Binds the bread crumb coating so it adheres to the eel pieces.
Grated bread crumbs
Form a crisp coating that browns during cooking.
Suet
Greases the gridiron so the eels do not stick and add richness.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the serving sauce.

The step that matters

Dip the pieces into a beaten egg. The egg must coat the eel pieces evenly so the bread crumb mixture sticks; gaps leave bare fish that can dry out or fall apart during cooking.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, egg, bread, parsley, lemon, butter. 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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