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Lamprey, a LA Foley

A lamprey dish stewed in claret and vegetables, finished with a brown mushroom sauce and served with crayfish tails and mushrooms.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Lamprey, a LA Foley

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lampreys

  1. Truss each lamprey into a circular shape and secure with string.

  2. Stew the lampreys in claret with vegetables until cooked.

Make the sauce

  1. Reduce two-thirds of the cooking liquid with an equal amount of brown sauce and essence of mushrooms.

  2. Incorporate crayfish butter, essence of anchovies, nutmeg, lemon juice, and cayenne into the sauce.

  3. Pass the sauce through a fine sieve into a bain-marie with crayfish tails and button mushrooms.

Serve

  1. Drain the lampreys and place them in a dish, one on top of the other.

  2. Sauce the lampreys with the prepared ragout and garnish with glazed croutons and fried fillets of perch.

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

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

  2. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Sauce + crayfishtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together195 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Crayfish + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together343 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  5. Mushroom + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,988 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Lampreys
Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender when stewed gently in claret.
Claret
Cooks the lampreys and its reduced liquid becomes the base of the sauce.
Brown sauce
Adds body and savoury depth to the sauce as it reduces.
Crayfish butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying a rounded shellfish flavour into the sauce.
Crayfish tails
Contribute sweet shellfish flavour and texture to the finished ragout.
Button mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and a tender bite to the ragout.

The step that matters

Passing the sauce through a fine sieve. A fine sieve removes solids and fibres so the sauce turns smooth and glossy. Skipping this leaves a gritty texture that clashes with the tender lamprey.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, mushroom, crayfish, butter, nutmeg):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Peachfits less well
  4. Limefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, mushroom, crayfish, butter, nutmeg. 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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