To tease a jaded palate.

Today, December 8 ...

The Roman lyric poet Horace was born on this day in 65BC. In one of his “Satires” he illuminates the extravagant excesses of the obscenely wealthy by describing a dinner held by a boring and pretentious host. When a large wall-hanging fell down, bringing with it much dust and dirt, the guests could hardly contain their glee at his discomfort.

Among the “things that tease a jaded palate” were wild boar (caught when a soft southerly blew), crane’s legs, blackbirds with “charred” breasts, the liver of a white goose fattened on figs, and …

“ … Then a lamprey was brought in, lying on a great platter with shrimp sauce. Our host informed us that it had been caught before spawning, as its meat is less succulent if caught after spawning, and he gave us the recipe for the sauce. ‘You need virgin oil from Venafrum; roe and juices from the Spanish mackerel, a domestic wine five years old, added while the sauce is simmering … ”

The lamprey is a scaleless parasitic fish that looks like an eel, with a powerful sucker for a mouth, and was prized as a delicacy from ancient times - especially during Lent, because of its oily flesh and gamey taste. A large lamprey pie was a traditional demonstration of loyalty from the Corporation of Gloucester (the best lampreys came for the river Severn) to the King or Queen at the Coronation. After a century in the doldrums, the practice was resurrected in 1953 for Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation.

It is odd, this enthusiasm to give lampreys to royalty, given that Henry I is supposed to have died from eating “a surfeit” of them. Are the burghers of Gloucester trying to send a message to his descendants in the First Family?

Here are the 15th century instructions to prepare your lamprey by first drowning it in red wine (with the lid on the pot in case it leapt out), before cooking it in its own blood:

Take a quicke lamprey; do hem in a pott. Do thereto a porcyon of rede wine, & stop the pott above that he lepe nought out. When he ys endyng, take hym out & put hym in scalding watyr; & take hym in a linnen cloth in thy hond, & strip hem well that all the glame go awey, & save the skuyn hole …

Tomorrow … Pottages for the King’s Dyet. …