Salt herring

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Salted herrings in the Kantje

Salted herrings are herrings that are usually gutted on board the fishing vessel and stored in salt or brine . Salting preserves the fish and changes the structure of their muscle tissue. Matjes is a particularly fine and popular preparation variant of salted herring . Salted herrings should be watered before consumption.

The importance of the salted herring for the food culture of the Middle Ages

Until the 10th century, little herring was eaten far from the coast. After that, its importance in the food culture of the Middle Ages increased dramatically. The anthropologist Brian Fagan cites the main reasons for the increase in importance that only from this period onwards sufficient salt of a suitable quality was mined, this was traded over long distances and salt-based conservation methods were standardized. At the same time, shipbuilding techniques had developed so that increasingly larger ships could be built that made trading in these fish profitable.

The relatively high-fat herring could easily be salted or preserved by smoking. These methods of preservation were routinely used at home and abroad as early as the 11th and 12th centuries. Herring was particularly inexpensive; it was first marinated in brine for 14 days and then cold-smoked for a further 14 days until it had a reddish brown color. It was so durable that it was packed in barrels and transported with animals and boats from the coasts of Northern Europe to Southern Europe without any problems. Brian Fagan calls the herring preserved in this way a "fish without any social prestige", a food for the poor, monastery novices and soldiers. In modern times it was even exported overseas, where it was used to feed the slaves on the plantations. The taste of this smoked fish, produced in large quantities, was pungent, making it an underappreciated fasting food that was said to be the sole source of hunger. Today this type of smoked herring is no longer produced in Europe, as the long shelf life as its essential property has become obsolete due to modern preservation techniques.

Somewhat more expensive than the salted and then smoked herring was the herring, preserved only in brine. It was more perishable than the additionally smoked one and had to be processed more carefully. The success of the Hanse was partly based on the implementation of standardized processing methods that largely ensured the constant quality and durability of the pegs. A document from 1474 that has survived shows for the two southern Swedish fishing towns of Falsterbo and Skanör that herring fishing has developed into a well-organized mass production. 762 small fishing boats fished herring in the two places, so that around 3,500 people were directly involved in fishing. Another 700 people took the caught fish with 26 larger barges from the boats to the coast or transported them with carts to the 174 women who removed the fish, first layered them between pure salt and after a few days layered them in barrels filled with brine. In addition to the coopers who made, locked or repaired the barrels, 200 merchants with their journeymen and apprentices stayed in the two places who bought the herring and transported it from there to all of Europe. A total of 5,000 people in Falsterbo and Skanör were directly involved in the herring trade. A single barrel of herring contained between 900 and 1000 herrings. Salt accounted for about a fifth of their volume. In the main season, which lasted from July 25th to September 29th, the two places temporarily swelled to the size of a medieval city. In the Witten , the processing sites owned by individual Hanseatic cities, up to 20,000 people came together to process and trade herring. The fish trade in Yarmouth was organized in a similar way, where according to modern estimates 10 million fish were caught, processed and traded in 1336-1337. The herring preserved in this way became a standard fasting food of the Middle Ages, which was exported far into southern Europe. Herring barrels from Flanders were traded in Tuscany, among others, in 1396; In 1430, tons of herring were loaded for Barcelona in Cologne, and various household books that have survived show that for many households deep inland Europe between the end of November and Easter, the saltwater fish herring was the most important source of protein.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Fagan, pp. 95-99
  2. ↑ J. Münter: About the herring of the Pomeranian coasts and the branches of industry connected to them , in: Archive for Natural History, Volume 29, Volume 1, pp. 281-360 (1863), online .
  3. ↑ Fagan, p. 103
  4. ^ Sue Shephard: Pickled, Potted & Canned - How the preservation of Food changed Civilization , Headline Book Publishing, London 2000, ISBN 0-7472-6207-1 , pp. 109-110
  5. ↑ Henisch, p. 40 and Sue Shephard: Pickled, Potted & Canned - How the preservation of Food changed Civilization , Headline Book Publishing, London 2000, ISBN 0-7472-6207-1 , p. 110
  6. ^ Sue Shephard: Pickled, Potted & Canned - How the preservation of Food changed Civilization , Headline Book Publishing, London 2000, ISBN 0-7472-6207-1 , p. 113
  7. ^ Fagan, p. 120
  8. ↑ Fagan, pp. 108-109
  9. ^ Schubert, p. 137
  10. ↑ Fagen, p. 112
  11. ↑ Fagan, p. 121 and Schubert, p. 133

literature