Home › The Principles of Cookery › Lamprey, Stewed
Lamprey, Stewed
Rub a moderate-sized lamprey with salt, wash it in warm water to cleanse it from slime, cut off its head, tail, and gills, season with pepper, salt, and nutmeg, and cut it into pieces about three inches in length. Put these pieces into a stewpan with three or four small onions, a dozen button-mushrooms, a bay-leaf, a table-spoonful of chopped parsley, a small piece of thin lemon-rind, three-quarters of a pint of boiling stock or water, and a glass of sherry. A larger proportion of wine may be used, if liked. Simmer very gently until done enough. Thicken the gravy with a piece of butter rolled in flour, and boil for a few minutes longer. Take out the fish, place it on a hot dish, squeeze the juice of half a lemon over it, and strain the sauce upon it. Garnish with cut lemon. Time, an hour and a half. Probable cost, uncertain, lampreys being seldom offered for sale. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A Victorian stew of a fish almost nobody buys now. The technique translates directly to eel, which is what most cooks will end up using.
- Sourcing, and the lawLamprey are still fished and sold commercially in Portugal, Spain, western France, Finland and the Baltic states, and limited licensed netting has continued on the Severn in England. Elsewhere the various species are protected or their capture restricted, so buy from a fishmonger rather than a river, and check local rules before you go looking.
- SubstituteEel gives the closest result: the same dense, oily, firm flesh that holds up to long wine-braising.
- The slime is the point of the saltLamprey and eel both carry a heavy mucus coat that will not rinse off with water alone. Rubbing hard with coarse salt, then washing in warm water, is what removes it; skimped here, the finished sauce tastes muddy.
- Raw bloodLamprey and eel blood contains a protein toxin that irritates the mouth and gut. Thorough cooking destroys it entirely, so a stew like this is not a concern, but do not taste the blood or the cleaning liquid, and wash your hands and board before touching other food.
- MeasuresThree-quarters of an imperial pint is 15 fl oz, or a scant 2 cups. The recipe does not define its "glass" of sherry, and Victorian wineglassfuls were commonly reckoned at about 2 fl oz; use a dry amontillado or oloroso rather than a cream sherry.
- TimeAn hour and a half is long even for lamprey. Start testing three-inch pieces at 35 to 40 minutes over a bare simmer — the flesh should come away from the cartilage cleanly. Lamprey have no true bones, only cartilage, so overcooking shows as collapse rather than dryness.
- ThickeningButter rolled in flour is beurre manié — equal parts by weight, worked to a paste and whisked in off the boil, then simmered two or three minutes to lose the raw flour taste. About 1 oz of each is right for this quantity of liquid.
- ServingFour to five as the original claims, but only as one course among several. Boiled potatoes or plain rice absorb the sauce; toast is the usual accompaniment with the Bordelais lamproie.
Lamprey are jawless, eel-shaped parasitic fish that rasp onto other fish with a ring of horny teeth, and they were prized in medieval and early modern Europe as a rich, meaty catch that could pass as fish on fast days. English royal households ate them in quantity — Gloucester's gift of a lamprey pie to the sovereign is a long-documented custom, and Henry I is traditionally said to have died of a surfeit of them, a story worth treating as legend rather than diagnosis. By the time Cassell's was compiled they were hard to come by in the market, which is what the entry means when it gives the cost as "uncertain, lampreys being seldom offered for sale."