On Friday afternoon, combating the hordes in my temporary capacity as festival legal compliance doorman at Pints&union in New Albany, I was explaining my latest idea for new and innovative Harvest Homecoming booth food.
It’s a delightful stargazy pie with pilchard heads gloriously intact, the thought of which diverted my attention from mundane elephant ears and pork tenderloin sandwiches to English comfort food and daydreams of Real Ale, knowing the pantry at my house is utterly barren of Marmite, and concluding that I’d be compelled to make do with kippers and a nitro can of Old Speckled Hen.
The words of Inspector Morse, classic British television police crime solver, popped into my head.
“The secret of a happy life is to know when to stop – and then go that bit further.”
All the way to lamprey pie, in fact, which is a species-specific variant of the aforementioned pilchard bake with royal connotations, as detailed at the always magnificent Gastro Obscura, covering “the world’s most wondrous food and drink.”
Michigan’s Bloodsucking Parasite Is Britain’s Royal Delicacy, by Diana Hubbell
The sea lamprey, or Petromyzon marinus, looks like something dredged up from the depths of hell. Virtually unchanged over the last 360 million years of evolution, each of these three foot-long “living fossils” resemble eels or fish, but happen to be neither. These parasites have a gaping suction cup ringed with row upon row of teeth for a maw. After attaching themselves to the sides of other cold-blooded swimmers, they use their serrated tongue to rasp away scales and leech away blood, slowly killing their prey.
Despite their uncanny resemblance to the Sarlacc from Star Wars, lampreys have been a delicacy in England for centuries. In the 12th century, King Henry I was so fond of them that, according to the chronicler Henry of Huntingdon, he died in 1135 in Normandy of a “surfeit of lampreys.” This unfortunate incident may have been why the citizens of the city of Gloucester opted not to send King John a lamprey pie in 1200. Yet the monarch was so angered that Gloucester “did not pay him sufficient respect in lampreys” that he fined them in revenge.
From then on, Gloucester supplied lamprey pies to the royal court for special occasions. By 1229, King Henry III was so insistent on getting his cut that he declared, “none shall buy or sell lampreys until John [the King’s cook] shall have taken as much as needed for the King’s use.” In 1917, with England embroiled in war, the monarchy decided to scrap the tradition, only to revive it for the queen’s coronation. In subsequent years, lamprey supplies dwindled and the pies fell out of favor again.
Yet as dams and industrial pollution destroyed the lamprey’s spawning grounds in the UK, these resourceful vampires made their way from the Atlantic Ocean into the lakes and rivers of North America via man-made waterways. In Britain, they are protected, but across the pond, they’re a dangerous invasive species.
Previously:
Edibles & Potables: Is it a good idea to serve humble pie for Thanksgiving?
