Herring: A Global History (Edible) by Kathy Hunt

Author:Kathy Hunt [Hunt, Kathy]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Reaktion Books
Published: 2017-10-01T04:00:00+00:00

Second World War poster printed in Canada encouraging women to buy only what they need and continue rationing food.

Advertisement in the Canadian Grocer for Wallace’s Herrings in Tomato Sauce, c. 1919.

Because herring was such a staple of Second World War diets, it risked becoming mundane, if not dreaded. To keep cooks inspired and consumers satisfied, the UK Ministry of Food handed out flyers containing herring recipes. Included among the suggested dishes were mock fish cakes, which substituted herring paste for fish fillets, grilled herring, baked herring, oatmeal-crusted herring and potato salad with herring. In Norway cooks were instructed on how to make the national dish of lamb and cabbage stew, fårikål, with salted herring instead of lamb.

During this era all parts of herring were utilized. The roe appeared in dishes such as soft roe with baked spuds in jackets and herring-roe bread pudding. Regarding the latter, the Norwegian information office admitted that the dish sounded terrible but that ‘it tastes almost like a good bread pudding’. Granted, this was far from a ringing endorsement but keep in mind that this was wartime and food, whether sweet, savoury or delectable, was scarce.

In the years after the Second World War Europe continued to suffer a paucity of food. Too many fields and crops had been destroyed. Too many animals had been killed. Too many labourers were lost at war. As a result, animal proteins were rare. To aid the hungry, a surfeit of canned herring were shipped and distributed as relief supplies, and to help tired cooks, herring recipes continued to appear in print. In her 1951 cookbook French Country Cooking the British food writer Elizabeth David offered a quick, easy and inexpensive way to prepare the fish: stuff the herring with a purée of potatoes, pepper, nutmeg and herbs and bake or grill the fish for 10 minutes. To jazz up cheap, plentiful herring roe, David advised covering the roe with chopped tomatoes, a strip of lemon zest, parsley, salt, pepper, butter and breadcrumbs and baking the ingredients for ten minutes. These and other creative recipes made the post-war herring provisions more palatable.

Often the tinned herring came from Iceland. During herring’s prime it accounted for between 25 and 45 per cent of this Nordic island’s export income. In the First and Second World Wars and the rough years following these wars, Iceland shipped enormous quantities of herring to Sweden, Finland, Denmark, the Soviet Union, Germany and the United States. It has been said that without herring and the jobs and wealth that they created, Iceland as we know it today would never have existed.

Herring fed the hungry. Herring fleets and fishermen defended them. In some lands, such as the Netherlands, herring ships played an integral part in establishing a national navy. In others, such as Great Britain, the fishing trawlers and their fishermen became part of the navy during wartime. Such was the case in England during both world wars.

Conscripted into the Royal Naval Patrol Service, British herring trawlers, with their pre-war crews at the helms, patrolled harbours, carried supplies and swept for mines.

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