The Taste of Britain. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall

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СКАЧАТЬ recipe for Patum Peperium is said to have been ‘perfected’ by John Osborn, an English provision merchant living in Paris in 1828. At this time, compounds of fish, meat or cheese, with spices and butter, were very popular. Recipes for potted anchovies, the fish rubbed through a sieve to remove the bones, mixed with spices and sealed with clarified butter were made and used for garnishes, or spread on toast. The recipe remained the intellectual property of the Osborn family and was brought back to England in the middle of the nineteenth century. According to the company history (Elsenham, n.d.), it was very successful. To the original name, Patum Peperium (the first word appears to be a fanciful play on the word for paste, or pâté; the second is derived from the Greek for pepper), the phrase ‘The Gentleman’s Relish’ was added, apparently by customers asking for the product. Despite the fact that the paste was first made in France, it became closely identified with pre-war British upper-class tastes and remains so today. The brand was sold by the Osborns on the retirement of the last 2 surviving members of the family from the business in 1971.

      REGION OF PRODUCTION:

      SOUTH EAST ENGLAND, LONDON.

      Smoked Salmon (London cure)

      DESCRIPTION:

      SMOKED WILD SALMON HAS A REDDER HUE THAN THE FARMED, WHICH IS ORANGE-TINTED, AND SLIGHTLY TRANSLUCENT. FLAVOUR AND TEXTURE: SOFT BUTTERY FLAVOUR, VERY MILD SALT AND SMOKE; YIELDING.

      HISTORY:

      The light London cure developed from a different tradition to those known in Scotland. These last were intended to preserve the fish for a matter of months and were therefore heavy and intrusively flavoured. Immigrants from eastern Europe, arriving in England at the end of the nineteenth century, brought with them expertise in their own style of curing and began to practise in London using supplies of wild salmon from Scotland. The London cure was a means of enhancing flavour rather than of preservation. The fish is intended for consumption within a few hours of processing: it is more mildly flavoured, with a silkier texture than most Scottish smoked salmon. The most prominent firm, H. Forman and Sons, began curing in 1905. They are the last family firm of East-European origin still working in this field.

      TECHNIQUE:

      Forman and Sons use both wild and farmed salmon from Scottish waters. The farmed salmon is bought fresh as necessary; the wild is bought in season and supplies are frozen for subsequent use. Much of the fish is smoked to individual orders, the sides selected for size and oil content to the customer’s taste. After filleting and trimming, pure salt is used in a very light, dry cure which emphasizes the natural flavour of the fish, rather than masking it as do heavier cures; the sides are then lightly smoked.

      REGION OF PRODUCTION:

      SOUTH EAST ENGLAND, LONDON.

      COMPARE WITH:

      Smoked Salmon, Scotland (p. 369)

      Whelk

      DESCRIPTION:

      AT POINT OF SALE, WHELKS ARE DISPLAYED COOKED AND SHELLED; THOSE FROM WHITSTABLE USED FOR THE ENGLISH MARKET GENERALLY WEIGH ABOUT 100-140 PER KG.

      THE MEAT IS BROWNISH-YELLOW, FLAVOURFUL AND CHEWY; THEY ARE SOLD BY WEIGHT OR IN PRE-WEIGHED PORTIONS. THERE ARE SIGNIFICANT DISPARITIES OF SIZE BETWEEN WHELKS FROM DIFFERENT AREAS AROUND THE BRITISH COAST.

      HISTORY:

      Whelks, Buccinum undatum, are a common gastropod whose coiled, pointed shells are found on the coasts. Variant names are dog whelk, waved whelk, and buckie (in Scotland). The Romans carried them to various inland sites, and they are mentioned in the accounts of fifteenth-century fishmongers and many medieval households. For instance, 4,000 were used to garnish a salted sturgeon at the enthronement of the Archbishop of Canterbury in the early sixteenth century. The normal medieval procedure was to boil in water and eat with vinegar and parsley (Wilson, 1973).

      Fishing grounds for whelks are off the north coast of Norfolk and in the Thames estuary. They formed part of the diet of the London poor, both at home and on holiday on the Kent coast. The phrase, ‘he couldn’t run a whelk stall’, suggests they found a ready sale. However, they were never considered elegant.

      When they are bought ready-cooked as street food, the consumer splashes as much vinegar on as he would wish. They remain a seaside staple and as part of the food traditions of the urban poor in Midland cities. The uncooked meat has found a new market in Chinese and Japanese restaurants.

      TECHNIQUE:

      Whelks are usually fished within a few miles of the shore; the best quality come from open waters. They are carnivorous and plastic barrels or iron baskets baited variously with dead shore crabs, fish offal or salt herring are used to catch them. On the East coast, a number of pots are tied to one rope to form a shank, with a buoy at each end. Weather permitting, the pots are examined, emptied and re-baited daily. Once landed, the fish are boiled in sea-water, shell-on, for 12-16 minutes, then cooled and the meat extracted. The cap (operculum) is discarded. Alternatively, some processors crack the shell and remove it, which reduces boiling time to 7-8 minutes. If the whelks are required raw, the shells are crushed and removed before packing.

      REGION OF PRODUCTION:

      EAST ENGLAND.

      Whitebait

      DESCRIPTION:

      INDIVIDUAL FISH ARE VERY SMALL, 3-4CM IN LENGTH AND SLENDER IN PROPORTION. WEIGHT: TYPICALLY, THERE ARE ABOUT 400 FISH TO A KILO. COLOUR: SEMI-TRANSPARENT, OR SILVER-WHITE.

      FLAVOUR: WHITEBAIT ARE VALUED AS MUCH FOR THEIR CRUNCHY TEXTURE AS THEIR FLAVOUR, WHICH, WHILST MILDLY FISHY, IS MASKED BY THE FLAVOUR OF HOT FAT DURING FRYING AND THE LEMON JUICE WITH WHICH MOST PEOPLE SEASON THE DISH JUST BEFORE EATING IT.

      HISTORY:

      Whitebait may be a mixture of the fry of herring (Clupea harengus) and sprat (Sprattus sprattus), or the fry of sprat alone. Historians have claimed whitebait first appeared on an English menu as long ago as 1612 (Davidson, 1979). The name derives from the use of these small fish as bait for catching other fish (OED). It seems that they really became important as food in the mid-eighteenth century. For at least a century after this time, they were a noted speciality of Blackwall and Greenwich, downstream from the City of London (Mars, 1998).

      There was much controversy over the exact nature of whitebait, some claiming that it was actually a separate species. This debate was still alive in 1861 when Mrs Beeton stated, ‘This highly esteemed little fish appears in innumerable multitudes in the river Thames, near Greenwich and Blackwall, during the month of July, when it forms a tempting dish to vast numbers of Londoners who flock to the various taverns of these places in order to gratify their appetites … The ministers of the Crown have had a custom, for many years, of having a “whitebait dinner” just before the close of the session.’ This ministerial dinner has origins more banal than epicurean delight in fish fry. There used once to be an annual shindig held at СКАЧАТЬ