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Lamprey, a LA Foley

Lamprey stewed in claret with vegetables, finished in a sauce with butter, anchovy essence, nutmeg, lemon, cayenne, served with tails, mushrooms, croutons, and perch fillets.

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. Shape each lamprey into a circle 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.

  2. Add crayfish butter, essence of anchovies, nutmeg, lemon juice, and cayenne to 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 arrange them in a dish, saucing them with the prepared ragout.

  2. Garnish with glazed croutons and fried perch fillets.

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. Butter + mushroomtop 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. Nutmeg + mushroomtop 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 gently stewed in claret.
Claret
Cooks the lampreys and its reduced liquid becomes the base of the sauce, adding flavour and acidity.
Brown sauce
Adds body and savoury depth to the reduced cooking liquid, thickening the sauce.
Crayfish butter
Adds rich fat and a concentrated shellfish aroma to the sauce.
Essence of anchovies
Adds a salty, savoury depth that rounds out the sauce.
Crayfish tails
Add firm texture and sweet shellfish flavour to the finished ragout.

The step that matters

Reducing the cooking liquid with brown sauce. Reducing concentrates flavour and thickens the liquid, but boiling too hard can make the sauce bitter or break it. A gentle simmer keeps it smooth and balanced before the butter and seasonings are added.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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