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Eel Pie

A savory pie made with eels, stock, mushroom ketchup, lemon juice, and pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA fairly hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a fairly hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the stock

  1. Clean and skin the eels, then cut them into 2-inch pieces.

  2. In a stewpan, combine the heads, tails, and fins of the eels with the meat stock and simmer for about 30 minutes.

  3. Strain and skim the stock well.

  4. Add the lemon juice and mushroom ketchup to the stock, then pour half of it into the pie dish.

Assemble and bake

  1. Place the eel pieces in a pie dish, seasoning with salt and pepper between the layers.

  2. Cover with pastry and bake at 400°F (200°C) for about 1 hour.

  3. Warm the remaining stock and pour it into the pie through a funnel as soon as it is taken from the oven.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Meat + mushroomtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,423 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Mushroom + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Mushroom + ketchuptop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Eels
Form the main filling, providing the meat and rich flavour of the pie.
Meat stock
Provides the liquid base that becomes the savoury sauce in the pie.
Puff pastry
Forms the crisp, flaky crust that browns in the oven over the filling.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds deep savoury, umami flavour to the stock.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich stock and balances its savoury flavour.

The step that matters

Pouring the stock through a funnel after baking. The stock is poured in hot, straight from the oven, so the pastry stays puffed and the filling stays moist. Cooled or added too early, the stock can soak the pastry and leave the filling dry or unevenly set.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, mushroom, ketchup, pepper):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Red currantfits less well
  4. Avocadofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, mushroom, ketchup, pepper. 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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