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LAMPREY, STEWED (Worcester mode)
After cleaning the fish, carefully remove the cartilage which runs down the back, and season with a small quantity of cloves, mace, nutmeg, pepper, and allspice. Put it into a stewpan, with strong beef gravy, a glass of port, and a glass of Madeira. Cover close, and stew till tender; then take out the lamprey and keep it hot. Boil up the liquor with two or three chopped anchovies and a little flour and butter; add the juice of half a lemon and a tea-spoonful of made mustard. Strain over the fish through a sieve, and serve with sippets of bread and grated horse-radish.
A Severn-side dish from the age when lamprey was a market fish. The cooking itself is straightforward braising in fortified wine and gravy; the difficulty is sourcing and cleaning the fish.
- Sourcing comes firstLampreys are legally caught and sold in Portugal, Spain, France, Finland and Latvia, but sea and river lamprey are protected species across much of the rest of Europe and the surviving Severn fishery is licensed and tiny. Buy only from a licensed supplier; do not take one from a river yourself.
- Cleaning is not optionalLamprey skin carries a heavy slime coat that must be scalded or salted off, and the blood and serum are unpleasant enough that traditional practice bleeds the fish thoroughly before cooking. Thorough cooking, which this recipe gives, handles the rest.
- The cartilage down the backLampreys have no true bones; the "cartilage" is the notochord, a soft rod running the length of the body. It is traditionally taken out before cooking, and can be drawn out once the fish is opened along the back or cut at head and tail.
- A glass of wineA wineglass in Victorian cookery books is usually reckoned at about 2 to 2.5 fl oz, so roughly a quarter cup each of port and Madeira. Use a tawny port and a Sercial or Verdelho Madeira rather than anything sweetened for cooking.
- Strong beef gravyThis means reduced brown stock, not a thickened modern gravy. The recipe gives no quantity; enough well-reduced, unseasoned beef stock to come part-way up the fish is a reasonable reading.
- Spice quantities"A small quantity" of five spices means a pinch of each. Cloves and allspice dominate quickly in a closed pan with wine; two or three cloves and four allspice berries for a 1 lb fish is a sensible ceiling.
- Stewing timeLamprey flesh is dense and fatty and takes longer than most fish: expect 40 minutes to an hour at a bare simmer, covered, for a fish of a pound or so. It should yield to a skewer without falling apart.
- Finishing the sauceThe "little flour and butter" is a butter-and-flour paste (beurre manié). The recipe has it boiled up with the chopped anchovies so they melt, and the lemon and mustard added afterwards.
- Sippets and horseradishSippets are small triangles of bread fried in butter or toasted, set round the dish. Freshly grated horseradish, not the creamed jar, is what cuts the richness here.
- YieldOne medium lamprey serves two as a main course, three or four as a course in a longer meal.
Lamprey has been a Severn fish for as long as there are records of English fish markets, and the towns along it — Gloucester, Worcester, Tewkesbury — built local reputations on it. Gloucester's lamprey pie, sent to the reigning monarch at Christmas or coronation, is the best-documented survival of that trade; Henry I is traditionally said to have died of a surfeit of lampreys, a story repeated so often that it has become the fish's chief claim on public memory. A "Worcester mode" heading marks the dish as a regional speciality worth recording rather than an everyday one, and the treatment shows it: beef gravy, port, Madeira, anchovy and made mustard are the vocabulary of a rich brown fish stew, closer to a jugged hare than to anything done with cod. Lamprey is an eel-shaped jawless fish that feeds by rasping onto other fish; its flesh is dark, oily and firm, and cooks have generally treated it more like meat than like fish. Its near-disappearance from British tables is usually attributed to river pollution and to weirs cutting off spawning grounds through the twentieth century, alongside changing taste.