It seems the city has given the pie as a gift to the standing monarch since the Middle Ages — and offered one to the Queen at her 1952 coronation. This time around they had to resort to drastic measures to get the creepy creatures since lampreys are now an endangered species in the United Kingdom, the British website ThisIsGloucestershire.co.uk reported.
So the city made an inquiry to the Great Lakes Fishery Commission, in Ann Arbor, Mich., in hopes of getting a few donated to the cause.
Officials like Commission spokesman Marc Gaden were only too happy to comply since the lampreys are an invasive, barely controlled nuisance in the Great Lakes, known for attaching themselves to the bodies of native fish, such as lake trout, and sucking out their innards, usually killing them.
“We would prefer to send them truckloads of lamprey,” Gaden told the Detroit Free Press.
The Commision has shipped two pounds of slimy but frozen lamprey to Gloucester, but Gaden is going to visit England on vacation and will officially present the fish to the mayor of Gloucester on May 4.
After that, the hard work of making the pie will fall to Sarrah Maccey of the Gloucester Folk Museum, who are considering various ancient recipes including one that cooks the creatures in a sauce of wine, vinegar, cinnamon and lamprey blood, before being baked in a tall crust.
Source: huffingtonpost
