Stewed Eels, English Style

Ingredients

• a little salt
• half a bottle of port wine
• two ounces of butter
• two tablespoonfuls of flour
• a gill or two of good stock
• two glasses of port wine
• a teaspoonful of essence of anchovy
• two dozen button onions

Method

1. 1

   Prepare the eels by killing, cleaning, and cutting them into pieces.

2. 2

   Place in a stewpan with carrot, onion, parsley, thyme, peppercorns, cloves, mace, and salt.

3. 3

   Moisten with port wine and stew for twenty minutes.

4. 4

   Make a sauce with the cooking liquor, butter, flour, stock, and port wine, then combine with the eels and serve with croutons.

Nutrition per serving

As published

This recipe was extracted from Practical household cookery (1891) by E. Duret, page 92. The excerpt below is the record exactly as published.

STEWED EELS, ENGLISH STYLE. Eels are generally alive when brought into the kitchen ; it is therefore necessary, on account of their tenacity of life, to know an easy way of killing them ; this is done by merely inserting the point of a sharp instrument into the spine at the back of the head to the depth of an inch, when the eel will become perfectly motionless. Then scour the fish well with freezing salt, in order to remove the slimy mucus attached to the skin ; after which, with a cloth in your left hand take a firm hold of the eel's head, and with the right hand proceed to detach the skin just below the gills with the point of a small kuife. When this is done take hold of the loosened skin with your right hand and force it to slide off the fish ; cut off the head, lay the fish flat on the table, and with the same pointed knife open it from one extremity to the other by pressing the point of the blade against the backbone on both sides ; remove the gut, dec, trim away the fins, clean and wipe thoroughly both halves of the fish after having taken the bone out, then cut the eel into pieces of about three inches long, place them in a stewpan^ with a sliced carrot and onion, a few sprigs of parsley and thyme, a few pepper-corns, four cloves, a blade of mace, and a little salt. Moisten the lot with half a bottle of port wine, cover with a buttered paper and replace the lid on the stewpan ; set this on the stove-fire to stew gently for about twenty minutes ; after which drain, and trim the pieces, keeping their liquor to make the sauce, by melting two ounces of butter into a small stewpan. When this is done add two tablespoonfuls of flour and stir it over the fire with a wooden spoon until it becomes slightly coloured, then moisten gradually with the liquor in which the eels were stewed ; add to it a gill or two of good stock and two 2i6 PRACTICAL HOUSEHOLD COOKERY. glasses of port wine ; stir this sauce over the fire till it boils, when it must be drawn to the comer of the stove, in oinler to let it throw up gently the scum, which must be skimmed off; then, if necessary, reduce the sauce to its proper consistency, pass it through a tammy into the stew- pan containing the pieces of eel, add a few prepared mushroom buttons, a pat of fresh butter, a little blanched and chopped parsley, the juice of a lemon, and a tea- spoonful of essence of anchovy ; toss the whole well together over the fire till well mixed and boiling, then dish the eel up, pour the remainder of the sauce over it, garnish round with croiitons fiied in butter, and serve. 467. EEL XATELOTTE. Prepare a nice-sized eel as in No. 466, cut it into pieces of three inches long, and place them in a saut^-pan with two ounces of butter, the half of an onion chopped fine, and half a tablespoon ful of chopped parsley. Season with salt, pepper, a little nutmeg, one clove of garlic, and two bay-leaves; set these on the fire to brown a little; after which, sprinkle a tablespoonful of flour; fry for two minutes longer, stirring the while with a wooden spoon ; then moisten with half a bottle of red wine (claret. Burgundy, or Italian) and half a pint of stock; let it simmer for twenty-five minutes, and put the pieces of eel on a dish in a circular order, so that each piece rests on tlie other, viz., a slice of croiiton and a piece of eel, and so on. Then pass the sauce thiough a tammy into a stewpan, add a little anchovy butter, together with the juice of a lemon ; stir this on the fire till it boils, fill up the centre of the dish with two dozen button onions

Cook this with the app: pantry check, scaling, and the assistant.