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To Stew' Lamprey, As At Worcester

A stew of cleaned lamprey simmered in beef gravy and Madeira or sherry, finished with anchovy‑flour butter sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

To Stew' Lamprey, As At Worcester

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lamprey

  1. Remove the cartilage from the cleaned lamprey.

  2. Season the lamprey with cloves, mace, nutmeg, pepper, and allspice.

Stew

  1. Place the lamprey in a small stewpot and cover with equal parts strong beef gravy and Madeira or sherry.

  2. Cover the pot and stew until the lamprey is tender.

  3. Remove the lamprey and keep it warm.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Boil the cooking liquid with chopped anchovies, flour, and butter until thickened.

  2. Strain the gravy through a sieve and add lemon juice and made mustard.

  3. Serve the lamprey with sippets of bread and horse-radish.

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 + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Nutmeg + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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 through slow stewing in liquid.
Strong beef gravy
Provides the savoury liquid that cooks the fish and forms the base of the sauce.
Madeira or sherry
Adds wine acidity and aroma to the stewing liquid and the finished sauce.
Anchovies
Contribute deep savoury flavour that gives the sauce body and richness.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth sauce when heated with butter.
Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and adds a rounded, silky mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Boiling the thickened sauce. Flour must be fully cooked in the hot liquid with butter so it thickens smoothly without a raw, pasty taste. Straining afterwards removes any lumps and bits from the anchovies.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, nutmeg, pepper, allspice, beef, fish, sherry):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, nutmeg, pepper, allspice, beef, fish, sherry. 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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