Important: Safety Warning
This page describes home-canning methods from before the causes of botulism were understood. Canning low-acid foods without a pressure canner, as described here, can allow the growth of Clostridium botulinum, whose toxin is among the deadliest known. Follow current USDA home-canning guidelines instead.
This information has been left in for historical purposes but should not be acted upon.
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Lampreys and Lamperns
136. TO STEW LAMPREYS. -Mix spice enough in the following proportions, to rub in every part of the fish: one-fourth of mace, threefourths of cloves pounded, as much pepper as the two, and nearly as much salt as the whole, adding a little cayenne; stew down one calf's foot (or other good stock) as stiff as possible, taking the fat from it when cold; add to this jelly equal quantities of rough cider, walnut ketchup, and mushroom ketchup, making in the whole sufficient to cover the fish, which must be pinned up round to the size of the earthen pot intended to contain it: keep it in the stew-pan for an hour, letting it stew as slowly as possible, adding to it a glass of port-wine ten minutes before taking it up. It will do if the above are put into an earthen pot and set in the roaster or oven; an anchovy, a little lemon pickle, and mushroom essence will be an improvement. 137. To Pot.-The above seasoning, without the gravy, is right for potting lampreys, merely letting the fish stew for an hour in its own gravy, then putting it into pots, and pouring melted butter over it when cold. 138. TO STEW LAMPERNS.-The lamperns should be well cleaned in salt and boiling water with a whisk; put them to stew gently in a small quantity of good cider for about half an hour, then add some strong gravy and a sufficient quantity of spice, mixed as above, to make the dish palatable; after stewing till they are tender, add some portwine and a little walnut ketchup, with flour to thicken the gravy. Garnish the dish with horseradish.
Three linked entries from the lamprey section of a Victorian collection, written when the fish was still a commercial catch on the Severn and the Thames. They are worth reading, but not worth following: the potting method in particular belongs to a period before anyone understood anaerobic spoilage.
- Potting under butter is the hazardEntry 137 directs that cooked fish be packed into pots and sealed with a butter cap, which creates exactly the low-acid, oxygen-free, unrefrigerated environment in which Clostridium botulinum spores germinate and produce toxin. No stage of the method reaches or holds a temperature that destroys those spores, and the seal actively favours them. Potted fish should be made only to a current tested recipe with refrigerated storage and a short shelf life.
- The fish itself is a legal problemThe lampern is the river lamprey, Lampetra fluviatilis, and the larger fish is usually the sea lamprey, Petromyzon marinus. Both are listed under European habitats legislation and their fisheries are closed or tightly licensed in much of northern Europe, though legal commercial fisheries survive in parts of the south and the Baltic; in North America the sea lamprey is an invasive species subject to control programmes rather than a market fish. It is not an ingredient a domestic cook in Britain can readily or reliably obtain.
- Raw lamprey serumLamprey blood contains a haemolytic factor that is destroyed by heat but irritant when raw. The lampern entry calls for the fish to be well cleaned in salt and boiling water before stewing; the recipes throughout assume a cook who has handled the fish before and knows what to remove.
- No quantities at allThe spice mixture is given only as ratios -- one part mace to three of cloves, pepper equal to both, salt nearly equal to the whole -- with no weight anywhere, and the stewing liquid is simply "sufficient to cover". Nothing here can be scaled or reproduced with any confidence.
- Vanished store-cupboard itemsWalnut ketchup and mushroom ketchup are thin, dark, salty spiced condiments, closer to a Worcestershire-type sauce than to tomato ketchup; lemon pickle is a salted, spiced preserved-lemon liquor; mushroom essence is a concentrated reduction. Rough cider means dry, tannic, unsweetened farmhouse cider, not the sweet modern kind.
- Calf's foot jellyThe stock is boiled down until it sets stiff and the fat is lifted off the cold surface. It is doing the work a good gelatinous fish or veal stock would do now -- body and glaze, not flavour alone.
- "Pinned up round" and the roasterThe eel-like body is coiled to fit the pot and skewered so it holds its shape. The "roaster" is the oven of a kitchen range, used here as an alternative to the stew-pan for the same very slow, barely-simmering cooking.
Few English foods carry as much royal baggage as the lamprey. Henry I is traditionally said to have died in 1135 of a surfeit of them, and the city of Gloucester's custom of sending a lamprey pie to the sovereign is a long-documented civic gift, revived at coronations and jubilees into the twentieth century. The distinction this book draws between the lamprey and the lampern is a real one: the lampern, the smaller river lamprey, ran up the Thames and the Severn in enormous numbers and was cheap enough to be sold by the thousand as bait for the North Sea cod fishery, while the big sea lamprey was a luxury. Both were traditionally handled the way this section handles them -- heavily spiced with clove and mace, stewed in cider or wine, and then either potted under butter or baked in a raised crust, treatments that suited a rich, oily, dark-fleshed fish and, before refrigeration, bought it a few extra weeks of keeping.