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Lamprey, a LA Foley

A stew of lampreys cooked in claret with vegetables, finished with a brown sauce and crayfish butter, served with crayfish tails.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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. Form each lamprey into a circular shape and tie 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 add crayfish butter, essence of anchovies, nutmeg, lemon juice, and cayenne.

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

Assemble and 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 crayfish tails and small 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. 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
The main protein, which is firm enough to hold a tied circular shape during stewing.
Claret
Flavours the stewing liquid, which then becomes the base of the sauce.
Brown sauce
Adds body and savoury depth, thickening the reduced cooking liquid into a sauce.
Crayfish butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying the crayfish aroma through the sauce.
Button mushrooms
Add a soft, earthy texture and savoury flavour to the ragout.

The step that matters

Reducing the cooking liquid. Reduction concentrates flavour and thickens the liquid, but boiling too hard or too long makes it sticky and overly salty. Strong seasonings like anchovy and cayenne are added afterwards, so the sauce should be tasted carefully before serving.

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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