has since evolved 2 similar cheeses—Cecilia (plain and smoked) and Nepicar.
TECHNIQUE:
Carolina, Cecilia and Nepicar are all made from sheep’s milk, mostly from Friesland-Romney sheep on permanent pasture. For Carolina, a home-produced starter is incubated overnight and added to the warm milk the next morning followed, about 45 minutes later, by vegetarian rennet. The milk is left for another 45 minutes for the curd to set. The curd is cut, then stirred gently by hand for about 30 minutes, allowed to settle and drained. The curd is cut in blocks and stacked for an hour to drain further. The curd is milled, salted and packed into cloth-lined moulds. The cheeses are pressed individually for 24 hours, being turned once; then they are removed from the moulds, the cloths removed, the cheeses returned to the moulds and pressed a further 24 hours. On removal from the moulds, they are brined for a day. They are matured for 60 days.
Nepicar is made to the same recipe and method, using milk pasteurized by a high-temperature, short-term process, and the cheeses are matured for 90 days. Cecilia is made to a similar recipe, with slight differences in times and temperatures; it is dry-salted rather than brined, and matured in oak barrels over a bed of hops. Frozen milk is stored for use when the sheep stop milking in September.
REGION OF PRODUCTION:
SOUTH EAST ENGLAND, KENT.
Wellington Cheese
DESCRIPTION:
HARD, PRESSED, UNPASTEURIZED COW’S MILK CHEESE IN ROUNDS ABOUT 18CM DIAMETER, 7CM HIGH; A SMALLER ONE IS MADE FOR CHRISTMAS. WEIGHT: 2.5-3KG (LARGE); 750G (SMALL). COLOUR: A RICH YELLOW WITH A NATURAL GREY-BROWN MOTTLED RIND. FLAVOUR AND TEXTURE: RICH CREAMY TEXTURE, VERY SMOOTH; SWEET.
HISTORY:
There is no great history of cheese-making in Berkshire, though Reading University has latterly been a centre for research into dairying. Work carried out by the university led to the development of the recipe for Smallholder Cheese in 1911. It was specifically intended as a recipe for those wishing to make a hard cheese on a limited scale. It enjoyed some success with home cheese-makers, still being made at the end of the 1950s. In the mid-1980s, the maker of Wellington, Anne Wigmore (a microbiologist at the dairy research institute at the university) took the Smallholder recipe and developed it for use with milk from a Guernsey herd kept at Stratfield Saye, the nearby estate belonging to the Duke of Wellington.
TECHNIQUE:
Unpasteurized milk from one designated herd of Guernsey cattle is used. The Smallholder recipe is along the following lines. The milk is heated to 32°C, starter added, followed by vegetarian rennet about 30 minutes later; the top layer is stirred to ensure the cream is mixed in, then left 40 minutes. The curd is cut 3 ways and allowed to settle. The heat is increased to 38°C over 30 minutes, the curd stirred continuously, then the whey is drained off. The curd is cut into strips and stacked and re-stacked until the correct acidity has developed. Milling is into pieces the size of a nutmeg; the curd is salted during this process, then filled into moulds. Pressing is for about 24 hours, the cheese removed from the mould once (at an early stage) and reversed. The cheeses are unmoulded and matured 6 months in the cellars at Stratfield Saye.
Anne Wigmore’s interest in cheese-making has also led to the development of Spenwood (named after the Berkshire village of Spencer’s Wood, where the work was carried out) and Wigmore, both based on sheep’s milk; and Waterloo, a soft cow’s milk cheese.
REGION OF PRODUCTION:
SOUTH EAST ENGLAND, BERKSHIRE.
Jellied Eels
DESCRIPTION:
A CLEAR JELLY CONTAINING EEL IN PIECES 2-5CM LONG. COLOUR: THE JELLY IS PALE BROWN-GOLD, THE EEL PIECES HAVE LIGHT GREY-BLUE SKIN WITH WHITE FLESH, THE BEST HAVE A FINE PALE BLUE BLOOM ON THE SKIN. FLAVOUR: DELICATE, MILDLY FISHY.
HISTORY:
Eel is a fish once favoured by Cockneys. Thames eels are more silver in colour and sweeter of taste than those from the Continent (Simon, 1960). Among many early recipes, eel pies were celebrated—not least at Eel Pie Island, near Richmond-upon-Thames; Shakespeare describes a Cockney making a pie in King Lear, putting eels ‘in the paste alive’. Stews and galantines were also made with plenty of eels.
‘The appetite grows with eating.’
FRANçOIS RABELAIS
Today eel pie has all but vanished even if the shops seem to keep its name alive, but jellied and stewed eels are still made—sold from street stalls and cooked-food shops in London and seaside towns of Essex and Kent. These are the ‘Eel, Pie and Mash’ shops, which sell steak and kidney pies, mashed potatoes and cooked eels.
Brian Knights, who has made a study of the eel and its fishery in Britain, observes that eels are now caught in the Thames again. Some of them are used by the jelliers who supply the shops, but imported eels are also employed.
TECHNIQUE:
The eels are kept alive in holding tanks then electrically stunned and killed immediately before use. They are chopped into lengths then boiled for 15-20 minutes in salted water. The eels in their cooking liquor are left to go cold in the large white basins from which they are sold.
REGION OF PRODUCTION:
SOUTH EAST ENGLAND, LONDON.
Oyster
DESCRIPTION:
ENGLISH NATIVE OYSTERS ARE GRADED ACCORDING TO WEIGHT INTO: EXTRA LARGE (OVER 160G); 1: 120-160G; 2:90-120G;3:70-90G. FORM: THE SHELL IS DENSE AND HARD, RELATIVELY FLAT AND SMOOTH, WITH A STRONG NACRE ON THE INSIDE. COLOUR: THE MEAT IS A RICH CREAM, BISCUIT COLOUR.
WHITSTABLE OYSTERS ARE SLOW-GROWING WITH HEAVY SHELLS; THEY MAY WEIGH UP TO 240G AND BE UP TO 11CM LONG.
HISTORY:
The first people to exploit the native oyster, Ostrea edulis, on a large scale in this part of Britain were the Romans. The shellfish were even exported to Rome itself (Wilson, 1973). In the Middle Ages, the Colchester fishery was granted a charter in 1189.
There were many other beds of native oysters available to the British, Poole in Dorset and Helford in Cornwall to name but two. Trade between the coasts and consumers inland is documented readily from medieval books of account. But there is little doubt that the most important production was concentrated on the Thames estuary: Colchester on the north side and Whitstable on the south. The ‘Company of Free Fishers and Dredgers’, an association of oyster fishermen from Whitstable, has a history stretching back over 400 years. At their peak, there were more than 800 principals in the fisheries (Neild, 1995). One reason for their pre-eminence was the existence of London on their doorstep, with easy water transport to link them to Billingsgate, the principal point of sale. One has only to read diaries, correspondence and printed accounts to appreciate the scale of the business. Oysters were an important food of the common people in London: the Mayor regulated the price of oysters from at least the fifteenth century, and an early reference to ‘Colchesters’ from 1625 confirms the identity of the town with the product.
Oysters were apparently unlimited until a moment in the 1860s. The development of beds off the Sussex coast in the English Channel had caused the price to fall through oversupply, but these were soon exhausted, and disease and a sequence of bad weather combined to cause a shortage elsewhere. The oyster ceased to be food of the masses and became a costly delicacy.Problems first encountered by the Victorians were never properly addressed and the native oyster beds have suffered acute decline in the