Читать книгу The Taste of Britain - Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall - Страница 223

There are 2 forms of samphire. The first, and original, is rock samphire (Crithmum maritimum). The second is marsh samphire, once more commonly known as glasswort (Salicornia stricta) because it was used as a source of soda for glassmaking. Glasswort is found on many tidal marshes around the British coast. It is very common, and best known in Norfolk. Spencer (1994) observes that, unlike rock samphire, which was highly esteemed in the past, marsh samphire was historically a food for the poor. In the late nineteenth century it was a substitute for the increasingly rare rock samphire. Since the second half of the twentieth century, marsh samphire has become better known generally.

Rock samphire still grows abundantly on the coasts of southern Britain. It was the subject of a much-quoted line in King Lear, when Edgar wishes to deceive blind Gloucester into thinking he is on the cliffs at Dover: ‘Half way down hangs one that gathers samphire, dreadful trade!’ he exclaims.

Culpeper the herbalist remarked in 1656 that samphire was not as much used as it was, but the statement was no barrier to a battery of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century recipes, especially for pickles, the form that mostly reached the table. Nor was it in such short supply that it could not be hawked on the streets of London as ‘Cress marine!’ However, the curious intelligence of John Evelyn (1699) wished to pursue the possibility of cultivating the plant, to assure supplies, much as they did, he observed, in France. His venture was of little success and the plant here has remained obstinately wild. Evelyn included a recipe for pickling samphire ‘the Dover way’ - it was Mr John Bullen of Dover who sent him his experimental seeds, a descendant, perhaps, of Edgar’s labourer.

It is possible that there was insufficient rock samphire to maintain a large-scale trade, or the dangers of clifftop gathering were too fatal, but there are signs at the end of the eighteenth century that supplies were running out and a substitute was needed. Here we might bring forward another poet’s reference, John Phillips:

How from a scraggy rock, whose prominence

Half overshades the ocean, hardy men

Fearless of rending winds, and dashing waves,

Cut samphire, to excite the squeamish gust

Of pamper’d luxury…

Hugh Smythson in Compleat Family Physician (1781) lets fall that it was ‘not often brought genuine to London. The more easily gathered glasswort, already the object of industrial exploitation for the glass trade, was a willing candidate, but it is not entirely clear that its offer, or that of its vendors, was ever taken up. There may have been a plethora of early recipes, but there are few in Victoria’s reign, implying an acceptance of the scarcity of the original plant (Tee, 1983).

It was different in East Anglia. There, the locals accepted glasswort as samphire and continued to pickle it. Mabey (1978) remarks that the ‘old way was to pack the samphire into jars with vinegar and store them in bread ovens which were cooling down on Friday night after the baking was finished. The jars were left until Monday morning … it seems to have been highly valued.’ Even this tradition appears to have declined, and may have died out so far as the East Anglian table is concerned. However, the revival of the fresh-fish trade supplying restaurants and commercial kitchens in the South-East, together with an appreciation of wild foods, has led to a reintroduction of samphire (mainly marsh) to fishmongers. It can be bought in many places in London.

The position of rock samphire is less secure. No one gathers it in sufficient quantity to pickle it for sale, but there are commercial kitchens which use it in their recipes in the South-West of England. Pickled samphire is still available in markets in Spain (Stobart, 1980) and in Boulogne - to name but one in France. It can also be eaten raw at the start of the season, or lightly blanched and served with melted butter. It then goes as well with lamb as with fish.