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Lamprey, Stewed

A stew of lamprey with onions, mushrooms, bay leaf, parsley, lemon, stock, sherry, and a butter‑flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Lamprey, Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Rub the lamprey with coarse sea salt and wash it in warm water to remove slime.

  2. Cut off the head, tail, and gills, then season with pepper, salt, and nutmeg.

  3. Cut the lamprey into pieces about 3 inches long.

Stew and thicken

  1. In a stewpan, combine the lamprey pieces, onions, mushrooms, bay leaf, parsley, lemon rind, boiling stock or water, and sherry.

  2. Simmer gently until cooked through.

  3. Thicken the gravy with butter rolled in flour and boil for a few more minutes.

Serve

  1. Remove the fish, place it on a hot dish, and squeeze lemon juice over it.

  2. Strain the sauce over the fish and garnish with cut lemon.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  4. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Mushroom + sherrytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,176 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol (smoky, clove).

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

What each ingredient does

Lamprey
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender as it simmers in liquid.
Butter and flour
Flour thickens the stewing liquid into a gravy, and butter adds richness and smoothness.
Sherry
Adds acidity and a deeper, aromatic flavour to the stock-based sauce.
Onions
Soften during stewing and add sweetness and savoury depth to the gravy.
Button mushrooms
Release their savoury flavour into the sauce and add a soft, meaty texture.
Lemon juice
Adds brightness and acidity that balances the rich, savoury sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer gently until cooked through. Boiling vigorously toughens and breaks up delicate fish flesh, so gentle simmering keeps the pieces tender and intact while they cook through.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, nutmeg, mushroom, parsley, lemon, sherry, butter):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, nutmeg, mushroom, parsley, lemon, sherry, butter. 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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