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To Stew Lamprey

A stew of cleaned lamprey flavored with spices and thickened gravy, served with bread and horseradish.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Remove the cartilage from the cleaned lamprey.

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

Stew

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

  2. Cover the pot and stew until the fish 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 horseradish.

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
Is the main protein, which becomes tender and flaky when gently stewed.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth, lightly bodied gravy when boiled with butter.
Butter
Enriches the thickened sauce with fat and helps the flour set into a smooth texture.
Anchovies
Adds a salty, savoury depth to the sauce that rounds out the richness of the gravy.
Madeira or sherry
Adds acidity and a sweet, fortified depth of flavour to the stewing liquid.

The step that matters

Stewing until tender. Gentle, covered stewing at a low simmer lets the fish's connective tissue soften without the flesh toughening or breaking apart. Holding the fish warm afterward keeps it from overcooking while the sauce is finished.

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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