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To Stew Lampreys

A stew of lampreys cooked with spices, wine, cider, claret, herbs, onion, anchovy, and thickened with egg yolk or butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

To Stew Lampreys

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lampreys

  1. Skin and gut the lampreys, then season them with pepper, salt, cloves, nutmeg, mace, and lemon peel.

Stew

  1. Place sliced butter in the bottom of a saucepan, add the fish, gravy, white wine, cider, claret, thyme, winter savory, pot marjoram, and sliced onion.

  2. Stew over low heat, turning the lampreys until tender.

Thicken and serve

  1. Remove the lampreys, add an anchovy, and thicken the sauce with the egg yolk or butter rolled in flour.

  2. Pour the sauce over the fish and serve.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Lampreys
The main fish, which becomes tender through slow stewing in the liquid.
Egg yolk
Thickens the sauce and gives it a smooth, rich body as it sets gently with heat.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when rolled into butter, binding the liquid as it heats.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the sauce and helps prevent the fish from sticking.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aromatic depth to the stewing liquid.

The step that matters

Stew over low heat until tender. Gentle, low heat keeps the liquid barely simmering, so the fish cooks through slowly without toughening or breaking apart. Turning the pieces helps them cook evenly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, clove, nutmeg, lemon, butter, white wine, cider):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, clove, nutmeg, lemon, butter, white wine, cider. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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