Christmas traditions in Italy are varied and each region has a bunch of its own. In Naples, one of the most popular involves eel, orcapitone as it’s commonly known in the city of Parthenope. On Christmas Eve,capitoneis compulsory on every Neapolitan table, usually deep fried and served with a glass of good wine. But the question is: why?
To answer, let’s take a step back and explain what capitone is. In Italian, there are two different nouns we translate with eel in English: capitone and anguilla. Both are, in fact, the same fish, but while anguilla refers to the male, which is smaller, capitone refers to the much longer and larger female.
