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Eel Pie

A savory pie made with eel pieces, mushroom ketchup, lemon juice, and stock, topped with puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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.

Make the stock

  1. Place eel heads, tails, and fins in a saucepan with enough water to cover.

  2. Simmer for 1 hour, then strain and skim the stock.

Assemble the pie

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

  2. Mix the lemon juice and mushroom ketchup into the stock, then pour half over the eels in the pie dish.

  3. Cover the pie with pastry and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 1 hour.

  4. Warm the remaining stock and pour it into the pie through a funnel immediately after removing it 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. Mushroom + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,633 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Ketchup + peppertop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,207 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
Provide the main meat and body of the pie, which becomes tender during the long cooking.
Eel heads, tails, and fins
Release gelatin and flavour into the stock, which sets and moistens the filling.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds deep savoury umami flavour to the stock and filling.
Puff pastry
Forms a flaky, golden crust that encloses and seals the filling.

The step that matters

Pouring the remaining stock into the hot pie. Adding the warm stock right after baking helps keep the filling moist and loose, so it sets into a jelly-like texture as it cools rather than drying out.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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