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Lampreys, Stewed

Stewed lampreys with onions, mushrooms, parsley, and lemon rind.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Lampreys, Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lamprey

  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 empty and cut the lamprey into 3-inch pieces.

Stew

  1. Slice the onions and place them in the bottom of a stewpan.

  2. Dip each piece of lamprey in flour and lay them over the onions.

  3. Add the mushrooms, chopped parsley, and grated lemon rind.

  4. Cover and cook until the lamprey is tender.

  5. Serve hot.

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. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Mushroom + parsleytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,132 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Lamprey
Is the main protein, becoming tender and flaky as it cooks slowly in liquid.
Onions
Form a bed that softens and sweetens as they cook, flavouring the stew below the fish.
Flour
Coats the lamprey pieces, helping thicken the cooking juices into a light sauce.
Mushrooms
Add moisture and earthy flavour that blends into the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Cover and cook until the lamprey is tender. Lamprey is firm and rich, and it needs gentle, covered cooking so the pieces become tender without drying out or breaking apart.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, mushroom, parsley, lemon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, mushroom, parsley, lemon. 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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