This Tribute To The Herring Is Worth A Read
Thursday 1 September 2005
In
praise of the humble herring
The world's oldest
woman spoke highly of their health benefits - and she should know. She died
aged 115 this week, and put her longevity down to eating one of the pickled
fish every day. Paul Vallely celebrates The King of the Sea
· "Your raiment, O herring,
displays the rainbow colours
of the setting sun,
the patina on old copper,
the golden-brown of Cordoba leather,
the autumnal tints
of sandalwood and saffron.
Your head, O herring,
flames like a golden helmet,
and your eyes,
are like black studs
in circlets of copper."
Thus waxes the French
author Joris Karl Huysmans (1848-1907) in the Larousse Gastronomique. And if
that sounds fanciful consider Mrs Hendrikje van Andel-Schipper. She was, until
this week, the world's oldest person. She died in her sleep at 115, after
eating a herring every day. It worked for her.
The humble herring is
not a fish much in fashion. But for nigh on two millennia it has been the
secret which sustained the peoples and empires of northern Europe. The cool
temperate waters around our islands and the north-west coast of the continent
have teemed in huge quantities with the silver sparkle of this steely,
bluish-green-backed fish with the glistening silvery belly. The King of the Sea
was the folk name for what may well be the most abundant fish species in the
world. The herring has moved in great, wide, spawning shoals around our
littoral waters, plundered by gulls and gannets, with the rhythm of each year.
The Romans, a warm-watered Mediterranean type, had a blind spot for the fish.
But when the Anglo-Saxons arrived, herring fishing began to develop. By the 6th
century, drift nets were at work off Great Yarmouth, though fishing was then
restricted to the great rivers and estuaries into which certain members of the
herring family would ascend in big shoals to spawn in fresh water.
From that, the
herring became an essential part in the diet of the peoples of northern Europe,
and in the centuries that followed, it formed a staple food of the ordinary
people. It entered into our mythology too, with folk tales of jewellers who
wrought herrings from sterling silver to attract the itinerant shoals.
It played a huge part
in the continent's religion. Medieval Catholic Europe's huge demand for it,
during Lent and fasting days, laid the foundation of the Dutch empire.
Amsterdam, it was said, was built on herring bones. So large were the
quantities consumed that a 17th century French physician, observing increased
levels of sexual ardour during Lent, blamed the poor fish. The herring, says Alan
Davidson in The Oxford Companion to Food , is the fish which had the greatest
influence on the economic and political history of Europe.
After the process of
smoking fish was discovered in the 12th century the herring began to rival the
cod for importance. In the days before refrigeration, the herring and the cod
could be easily cured, and thus eaten far from the point of capture. The growth
of the herring trade was one of the reasons for the foundation of the Hanseatic
League, the first free-trade organisation in Europe. The merchants of the city
of Hamburg, who had easy access to the salt mines of Kiel (salt being essential
to the smoking process) forged an alliance with the merchants of Lubeck, who
monopolised the rich herring stocks off the coast of Sweden.
The huge hauls of
herring created great wealth for Danish, English, French and Dutch traders
whose governments built and deployed great naval forces to protect them,
creating the sea power which became the basis of the colonial era.
Such was the primacy
of the herring, that there developed as many recipes for preparing it as there
are days in the year. It was eaten raw, fresh, salted, cured, pickled and
fermented. The Germans created the soused roll-mop. The Dutch came up with an
enzyme-cured delicacy with raw, shredded onions. The English invented smoking
then kippering. The Flemish dreamt up a salad of smoked herring and warm
potato.
Great secrecy
developed across Scandinavia about the best marinade with tarragon, cherry,
sherry and curry as the defining extra ingredient. Mrs Beeton was even
suggesting flavouring herring with cloves. In Sweden, herring is fermented to
make surstrümming, which emits a strong, foul smell when the can is opened (the
trick is to open the can under water, or eat the stuff outside). From early on,
the recipes were highly sophisticated. One Manx recipe for minced herring pies
includes almond paste, fish roes, dates, gooseberries, rose water and saffron.
But the shoals of the
silver darlings were far from predictable. The ordinary folk of Europe got used
to feast and famine. Chronicles from the Isle of Man record that in 1648, local
people lived on herring, salt, butter and oatcakes. with water and butter milk
to drink (beer and ale being available only on market days). But the year
after, there came "a time of great dearth and scarsitie" during which
many islanders died of starvation.
But in the annus
mirabilis 1667, there was great rejoicing, when an immense herring shoal, such
as had never been witnessed before, arrived. Bishop Wilson called his clergy to
account for disgracing "their callinge ... by vendinge ayle and beer and
keeping victuallinge houses" in which "many of the people became not
only tipplers, but infamous for sottishness and drunkenness".
Yet by 1711 so grave
was the failure of the herring that the bishop inserted into the litany a
prayer to be read in all the churches on the island "that it may please
God to restore and continue to us the blessings of the sea". The people
were plunged into such want and penury that they began smuggling potatoes from
North Meols and Ormskirk on the mainland. But that is another story.
By the Victorian era,
kippers a curing process which had been invented in the 1840s by John Woodger,
of Seahouses in Northumberland, brought the demise of the red herring, a
tougher and drier victual whose success had been that it transported well
inland and abroad. (And was also allegedly useful for dragging across a fox
trail to deceive the hounds.)
Kippers became so
popular all over the world that herring fishing developed into a huge industry
in Britain. In parts of the country, as many as a quarter of the population
were engaged in catching, curing and distribution. The railways even ran
herring trains. Bloater, whole, ungutted smoked herring with a slightly gamey
taste, became a great delicacy in the gentry's crustless tea-time sandwiches.
But it remained
primarily the food of the poor. Before the Second World War, herring were still
so plentiful they were sold from barrows in the street, six for a penny. So, in
the age of post-war affluence, herring, in all their forms, went seriously out
of fashion. The humble herring was a symbol of a past that people were trying
to leave behind.
In Britain, the
fishing industry last year had a bumper harvest for herring, and the amounts
landed have been increasing year on year for years. Yet almost all the catch
goes to industrial processing for fish and animal food. It is often entirely
absent from supermarkets and frequently not even there on the slabs of our few
fishmongers.
Indeed, search the
internet and many of the references to the fish are overwhelmingly dismissive
or jocular, as with the recent publicity for Dr Bob Batty, a scientist from
Nottingham Trent University, who was awarded an Ig Nobel Prize (the satirical
equivalent of the Nobel awards for science which makes people laugh) for
research which suggested herring communicate with one another by farting.
But in the 19th and
even into the early 20th century, herring fishing a`n curing providsed an a
travelling industry for the fishermen and women of Scotland and northern
England, catching, pickleing and packing th silver darlings in barrels for
export.
But the reason the
world's oldest woman may have had the longest laugh, of course, is that herring
is very good for you. Lean fish such as sea bass, cod, haddock, hake, halibut
and sole, have a fat content of less than 2.5 per cent, herring, mackerel,
sardines, tuna and salmon, with a fat content of about 12 per cent, are high in
omega-3 oils.
These polyunsaturated
fatty acids benefit the cardiac muscles in the heart and reduce the chance of a
heart attack. Indeed, one doctor's surgery in Orkney recently prescribed
herring to a man with a dodgy ticker. Omega-3 oils also reduce the chance of a
miscarriage in expectant mothers and may well have other beneficial effects.
"This is an absolutely crazy situation, when good edible fish is being
processed instead of being presented to the human food chain," says Mike
Smylie, a maritime historian and author of Herring, A History of the Silver
Darlings.
Some chefs are
beginning to rerecognise this, too. "Look for plumpness, oiliness, a
silvery golden colour and a good smokey smell in a kipper," says the
blessed Delia. Rick Stein, the television chef, has come up with a trendy
recipe for herring with a caper and tomato salsa which is good (and so is his
version of the traditional Scottish dish of herring in oatmeal which he fries
in bacon fat and garnishes with streaky bacon, cut into thin strips, less good
for you, but delicious).
Mike Smylie himself,
who was named as BBC Radio 4 Food & Farming Awards Food Campaigner 2005 for
his pains, says fresh herring with black pepper and lime crust is delicious. He
says: "The salmon might be the prince, and the cod the pretender, but as
the saying goes, of all the fish in the sea, the herring is king'."
And that is not all.
Professor Michael Crawford, the director of the Institute of Brain Chemistry
and Human Nutrition at London Metropolitan University, has now discovered that
one omega-3 acid, called docosahexaenoic acid, is so essential that without it,
operation of the brain and the eyes begin to slow. These fatty acids also can
help arrest the progress of other brain malfunctionings such as multiple
sclerosis and Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease.
There is more. Mike
Smylie, who has the online nickname Kipperman, says research by the US
government's National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism suggested a
relationship between fish-eating and aggression. Dr Joseph Hibbeln said that,
with low levels of Omega-3 in the body, there is a corresponding low level of
cortisone releasing factor (CRF) which tends to trigger of aggressive behaviour.
Fatty acids play a
role in psychiatric disorders, impacting on symptoms of bipolar disorder,
schizophrenia and levels of attempted suicide. People who eat more fish are
less hostile and aggressive. And countries in which people eat more fish have
lower levels of depression. It is only a matter of time before the government
makes the herring compulsory. Do not say you have not been warned.
Source:
The Independent (https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/in-praise-of-the-humble-herring-5347560.html)
