Or, if for maigre days, when you have skinned your eels, throw the skins into salt and water; wash them well; then put them into a stew-pan with a quart of water, two onions, with two cloves stuck in each, and one blade of mace; let it boil twenty minutes, and strain it through a sieve into a basin.
Make the sauce about as thick as cream, by mixing a little flour with it; put in also two table-spoonfuls of port wine, and one of mushroom catchup, or cavice: stir it into the sauce by degrees, give it a boil, and strain it to the fish through a sieve.
N.B. If mushroom sauce (Nos. [225], [305], or [333]), or white sauce ([No. 364—2]), be used instead of beef gravy, this will be one of the most relishing maigre dishes we know.
Obs. To kill eels instantly, without the horrid torture of cutting and skinning them alive, pierce the spinal marrow, close to the back part of the skull, with a sharp-pointed skewer: if this be done in the right place, all motion will instantly cease. The humane executioner does certain criminals the favour to hang them before he breaks them on the wheel.
To fry Eels.—(No. 165.)
Skin and gut them, and wash them well in cold water, cut them in pieces four inches long, season them with pepper and salt; beat an egg well on a plate, dip them in the egg, and then in fine bread-crumbs; fry them in fresh, clean lard; drain them well from the fat; garnish with crisp parsley. For sauce, plain and melted butter, sharpened with lemon-juice, or parsley and butter.
Spitchocked Eels.—(No. 166.)
This the French cooks call the English way of dressing eels.
Take two middling-sized silver eels, leave the skin on, scour them with salt, and wash them, cut off the heads, slit them on the belly side, and take out the bones and guts, and wash and wipe them nicely; then cut them into pieces about three inches long, and wipe them quite dry; put two ounces of butter into a stew-pan with a little minced parsley, thyme, sage, pepper, and salt, and a very little chopped eschalot; set the stew-pan over the fire; when the butter is melted, stir the ingredients together, and take it off the fire, mix the yelks of two eggs with them, and dip the eel in, a piece at a time, and then roll them in bread-crumbs, making as much stick to them as you can; then rub the gridiron with a bit of suet, set it high over a very clear fire, and broil your eels of a fine crisp brown. Dish them with crisp parsley, and send up with plain butter in a boat, and anchovy and butter.
Obs. We like them better with the skin off; it is very apt to offend delicate stomachs.