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Fried Lampreys

Fried lampreys served with a sauce of butter, white wine, capers, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Fried Lampreys

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lampreys

  1. Bleed the lampreys and save the blood.

  2. Wash the lampreys in hot water to remove slime.

  3. Cut them into pieces.

Fry and simmer

  1. Fry the lampreys in a little fresh butter until nearly cooked.

  2. Pour out excess fat.

  3. Add white wine, shaking the pan.

  4. Season with whole pepper, nutmeg, coarse sea salt, sweet herbs, and a bay leaf.

  5. Add capers, a piece of butter rolled in flour, and the saved blood.

  6. Shake the pan often.

  7. Cover the pan.

  8. Remove the lampreys.

Finish the sauce and serve

  1. Strain the sauce.

  2. Boil the sauce quickly.

  3. Squeeze in lemon.

  4. Pour the sauce over the fish.

  5. Garnish with lemon.

  6. Serve as desired.

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

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

  2. Capers + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,222 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Capers + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,024 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Nutmeg + caperstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together211 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Lampreys
The main fish, cooked through in butter and then bathed in the sauce.
Fresh butter
Fat for frying, adding richness and browning to the fish.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the pan liquid that becomes the sauce.
Flour
Butter rolled in flour thickens the sauce slightly as it melts in.
Lemon
Squeezed in to brighten the sauce with acidity.

The step that matters

Adding the saved blood. Blood is a protein-rich liquid that thickens when heated gently and can curdle if it boils hard. Add it with the butter and flour, keep shaking the pan, and avoid a rolling boil until the sauce is finished, so it thickens smoothly instead of separating.

Swap the capers

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

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Capersthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, white wine, pepper, nutmeg, flour, 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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