Lamproie à la Bordelaise

Lamprey has been eaten in Europe since antiquity and was prized through the Middle Ages as a luxury fish; the English king Henry I is famously said to have died in 1135 from 'a surfeit of lampreys', a well-known historical anecdote, though it has nothing to do with the Bordeaux preparation. The Bordelais dish belongs to the Gironde, where lampreys are netted in the estuary and the lower Dordogne and Garonne on their spring spawning run, roughly between December and May. Cooking it 'à la bordelaise' means treating it as a civet — stewed in the region's red wine and thickened with the animal's blood, the same blood-liaison logic used for game. The dish is documented as a Bordeaux specialty in the classical French repertoire; sea lamprey is now a regulated and scarcer catch, which has made the dish rarer and more prized.

The sauce is near-black and lacquer-glossy, clinging to every piece — deeply winey, faintly iron-rich from the blood, with the smoke of cured ham underneath. The lamprey itself is firm and fatty, more like a rich dark meat than a fish, cut into thick rounds that hold their shape. Sweet stewed leeks melt into the gravy. It is heavy, vinous and savoury, the kind of dish that asks for the same red Bordeaux you cooked it in and a piece of bread to wipe the plate.

The thickening is a liaison au sang, the same trick as a hare civet: blood is rich in protein and haemoglobin, and when stirred into the hot sauce off a hard boil it coagulates just enough to bind and gloss the liquid, deepening its colour. The blood must be kept from clotting after collection — a splash of wine or vinegar at the bleeding acts as an anti-coagulant — and it must never be allowed to boil once added, or its proteins seize and the sauce turns grainy. A long reduction of the red wine concentrates its body and tannin around the lamprey's own fat; the cured ham lends salt and a backbone of cured-meat savour.