smoked eel
- noun
- Smoked eel pie.
Examples
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At the market, I found a specialty shop that sells smoked eel alongside other gourmet items.
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...and a whole smoked eel.
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Get the smoked tea, tea smoked eel roll, which is great.
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And I've read they do a lovely smoked eel.
Fiction book (1999) -
Vila Joya, Albufeira, Portugal at no. 45: Austrian chef serves roast goose liver and smoked eel as well as the salt cod the country is famous for.
Blog text (3) -
The men helped themselves to smoked eel on buttered bread and settled into chairs in the living room.
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For dinner, we enjoyed a delicious dish of smoked eel served with fresh vegetables.
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'eel cured and flavored by smoke' is directly and transparently derived from the adjective 'smoked' (cured/flavored with smoke) modifying the noun 'eel' (a long fish); the phrase follows the regular adjective + noun composition pattern in English. This is a common, literal food-description pattern found in many languages, so a B1 learner who knows both words will readily understand it.
Etymology
Smoked eel comes from the old way of cooking when the eel was hung over a wood fire until it became smoked, which kept it from going bad and gave it a strong taste. That's why the name now means 'eel that has been preserved and flavored by smoke'.