Consuming Interest
Oules of Sardines
By ELIZABETH DAVID By 1824 Joseph Colin had established a sardine-tinning factory in the Rue des Salorges at Nantes. The birth of the industry was attended by not unfamiliar wrangles, rivalries and com- plaints from the public. Colin's successful methods—he soon discovered that olive oil made the better preserving agent for sardines, and dropped the butter recipe—were almost imme- diately copied by competitors. In 1830 a Nantais restaurateur called Millet turned his establish- ment, situated in the heart of the residential quarter of the town, into a sardine-canning fac- tory. The smell of the frying fish outraged the residents. Millet was brought to court and in 1835 was forced to move his factory to the out- skirts of the town. In 1838 another of Joseph Colin's rivals had the bright idea of taking into the firm a man who happened also to bear the name Joseph Colin; making him a partner, the firm proceeded to sell their products under pre- cisely the same name as those of the originator. Another lawsuit followed"-and put an end to the scandal.
For nearly fifty years sardine canning re- mained a French monopoly. It was not until the
1880s that competition from Spanish, Portu- guese and American tinners, using cheaper pro- cesses and inferior grades of fish which were often not even true sardines, began to hit the French producers. By 1912 they felt driven into taking action to protect the industry from mis- representation.
Sardines as understood in America and Canada were then and are still essentially a tinned product of which no equivalent in a fresh state exists in transatlantic wafers; the only con- cession to exactitude obtained by the French from the American producers was that the place of origin of the tinned fish should be stated on their labels; and so the Americans have Ameri- can-tinned herrings sold as Maine sardines, Canadian herrings labelled Canadian sardines, Norwegian sprats called Norwegian sardines and sometimes even Norwegian anchovies; so has arisen the confusion in the minds of the public as to whether or not there is actually and in fact any such animal as a sardine.
In England as Well as in France matters are otherwise. The action brought in the English courts in 1912 by the French against an English importer selling Norwegian brisling (sprats) as sardines was finally settled in 1914 in favour of the French.
In England from that time on—which was presumably also the moment when the trade name of "skippers' was invented for sprat's—a sardine in a tin must be a sardine, and not a sprat or brisling, a herring or sild, a pilchard, an anchovy nor any other of the fish which belong to the same main family of clupeas, but the sardinia pilchardtes or clupanacion pilchardus Walbautn, the name by which the true sardine is now generally known. But just to add to the confusion there are several sub-divisions of the true sardine; the creature varies in numerous characteristics, as does the herring, according to the waters in which it is found, the food it eats, its degree of maturity. The Cornish pil- chard is in fact a sardine, large and old and bearing only a small resemblance in appearance and flavour to the sardine of the Nantais canners, which is essentially a small and immature fish of which there are two main qualities, the finest not more than two years old—the age is indi- cated by rings on the scales—and measuring not more than seventeen centimetres from head to tail; the second, a year older and somewhat larger. The Portuguese sardine is again another Variation, larger still and with one more verte- bra than the Breton sardine.
A director of Philippe et Canaud, the oldest existing and largest-producing sardine-canning firm of Nantes, had stern words to say about the way the English treat sardines. 'Our fine sardines,' he said, 'should not be cooked. At an English meal I was given hot sardines, on cold toast. It was most strange. They were my sar- dines and I could not recognise them. The taste had become coarse. Perhaps for inferior sar- dines . . but ours are best just as they are. A little cayenne or lemon if you like, and butter with sardines is traditional in France, although they are fat, and do not really need it. But, please, no shock treatment.'
One sympathises. Shortages and much-adver- tised cheaper replacements have rather made us forget that best-quality French sardines are products of some delicacy, a treat rather than an everyday commodity. Production is small— about one-fifth of that of Portugal—the process is expensive, the hazards a perpetual worry. A member of the Amieux family and of the famous firm which bears their name told me something about the sardine-canning business. It is chancy, a gamble almost, even after 140 years of existence.
Sardines are migratory fish; their habits are notoriously unpredictable; the catch is seasonal; the factories operate approximately from May to October only; for several years there may be —and have been—shortages; then perhaps sud- denly a glut. In a good year the Amieux firm will can up to 30,000 tons; in a poor one output may be as little as 6,000 tons. And since the sardine is one of the most perishable of all fish, depending for its delicacy upon its absolute freshness, the Nantais firms, who all deal in many other products besides sardines, have estab- lished special factories on the coast and close to the Breton and Vendeen fishing ports such as Douarnenez, the Ile d'Yeu, the Sables d'Olonne, Saint-Guenole, Quiberon, Le Croisic, La Rochelle. Once into port, the sardine fishers rush their catches to auction; 15,000 kilos is the minimum quantity of any use at any one time to the Amieux factories. Raced from auction to factory, the sardines are decapitated and de-
gutted, rinsed, plunged into a mild brine—made with salt from the Breton salt marshes—for any- thing from a few minutes to half an hour ac- cording to size; rinsed again, arranged on great grids, dried briefly in a current of warm air, rapidly fried (no more than a few seconds in the sizzling oil), drained, packed in their tins, covered with fresh olive oil selected by an expert taster for the purpose; the sardines are going to mature in that oil, and acquire some of its flavour; its quality is of prime importance. Finally, as re- quired by French law, the sealed tins are stamped with code figures which indicate the date of tinning, and then sterilised at a temperature of 112° Centigrade.
In essentials, the present-day French process is the same as the one evolved by Joseph Colin, the sardine-tinning pioneer; other and cheaper methods have been tried; some, such as the Portuguese one of steaming instead of frying the sardines, have proved successful and popu- lar; but the French canners consider that for finesse of flavour and texture, the olive oil- frying system has never been equalled.
Ideally, the Nantais producers say, sardines in olive oil would be kept at least a year before they are passed on to the consumer; and after two years are at their best. Nowadays, though, unless one were to lay down stocks of sardines, one would not get them in this condition. The 1962 season has been a comparatively good one, but it follows five poor sardine years on the Brittany and Vendee coasts; the entire produc- tion has been going out to the wholesalers and retailers within months.
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