Jellied Eels appears as a signature dish in 1 United Kingdom cities. See each city's local variant and where to eat it.
Jellied eels · London
Chunks of freshwater eel boiled in spiced stock with vinegar and bay, then cooled until the bone collagen sets the broth into a wobbly savoury jelly. East End working-class classic.
Jellied eels emerged in the 18th-century East End when the Thames teemed with eels and the city's poor needed cheap protein; nets were set as far inland as London Bridge. By the 1850s, pie-and-mash shops paired stewed eels (in liquor sauce) with jellied eels (cold, set), and the dish became inseparable from cockney identity. M. Manze on Tower Bridge Road (1902) is the oldest surviving pie-and-mash and jellied-eel shop in continuous trade. Modern Thames eels are protected; today's eels are imported from the Netherlands, but the dish itself remains a London icon.