Savory Baked Goods Eel Pie

eel pie
(from The Book of Household Management, edited by Isabella Beeton, 1861)

Ingredients:

1 lb. of eels​

parsley​

1 shalot​

nutmeg​

pepper and salt​

juice of 1/2 a lemon​

forcemeat​

1/4 pint of béchamel​

puff paste​

Instructions:

253. INGREDIENTS. — 1 lb. of eels, a little chopped parsley, 1 shalot; grated nutmeg; pepper and salt to taste; the juice of 1/2 a lemon, small quantity of forcemeat, 1/4 pint of béchamel (see Sauces); puff paste.​

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Mode. — Skin and wash the eels, cut them into pieces 2 inches long, and line the bottom of the pie-dish with forcemeat. Put in the eels, and sprinkle them with the parsley, shalots, nutmeg, seasoning, and lemon-juice, and cover with puff-paste. Bake for 1 hour, or rather more; make the béchamel hot, and pour it into the pie.​

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Time. — Rather more than 1 hour.​

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Seasonable from August to March.​

In the BBC "Italy Unpacked" series, Italian chef Giorgio Locatelli makes his traveling buddy British art critic Andrew Graham-Dixon some sort of eel dish -- my most vivid memory of the whole series is Locatelli tying the eel to a faucet to peel it. Not sure I would eat it, either, but in a culture where meat protein is rare I can see why people do.

Haven't seen eel in any of the American cookbooks I've poked around in from the 1830s or so to 1861, although I think they were still eating it in England then. Not sure it sounds any worse than turtle soup, and that was certainly a thing (although mock turtle soup was more common, I'm thinking -- turtles seemingly got hard to find a lot of places!).

Here's one for eel pie

Indeed it was very popular in the mid 19th century in England still. Mrs. Beeton (one of my favorite Victorian cooks) has loads of eel recipes in her compendium on household management.

She also has recipes for fried, stewed, and boiled eels if one is so inclined.