Aal

Eel fat holds phenols the way butter holds salt. Cold smoke is the point.

Oily flesh, volatile heat. Isothiocyanates strip the fat off the tongue.

Green sauce with eel is medieval and still right: chlorophyll against mud.

Kabayaki logic: soy salt and sugar lacquer the fat into caramel.

Numbing citrus is the traditional brake on eel richness.

Malic acid cuts the grease, then the sugar answers the smoke.

Earth on earth, but the sugar lifts the mud instead of matching it.

Sharp fruit against oily fish: the mackerel trick, moved upriver.

Resin reads as clean water and argues the silt out of the fish.

Roasted leaf over roasted skin. Two chars that read as one flavour.

Cocoa butter and eel fat run the same lactone chain. Lahousse territory.

Both heavy in pyrazines. An espresso glaze on eel is defensible, barely.