Eel au Vert à la Flamande

Anguille au vert à la flamande (Flemish green eel) teaches restraint in a cold sauce: bind it more lightly than looks finished at the stove, because chilling tightens everything. Beer, butter, and a formidable handful of raw-cut herbs cook around the eel, then the cold draws the sauce together. Overthicken it warm and you will meet paste at dinner.

The book assumes a fish cook who can skin two pounds of small eels and a cold larder waiting nearby, not a saucier, a perpetual stockpot, or a salamander. At home, ask the fishmonger to clean and skin the eel, use one wide pan, and let the refrigerator do the larder's work. I have halved the eel and beer in exact proportion for four first-course servings; the butter and herb quantities are practical home measures because the entry leaves them unstated. One cook, one stove, one evening.

The brigade scaffolding, skinning a heap of live eel at the station, can go. The dish itself must stay: raidir (stiffen) the pieces in real butter without browning, cook them first in beer, add the herbs raw and roughly chopped, use fécule only if the liquor truly needs it, then serve the whole very cold. The one step that matters most is the binding: stop while the warm sauce still seems a shade loose.