You win!
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Yeah, I was surprised to see that most of the medieval eel-paying was outside of London, given that eels are entirely associated with the East End nowadays. But I guess it’s not that cockneys ate the most eels, just that they were the last to stop doing it. Not that they have stopped. My grandmother used to eat stewed eels on purpose (her husband preferred tripe), and there are still multiple pie shops within walking distance of my home.
I wonder if Observer writers ever accidentally read their own words, and are seized by the urge to slap themselves dead
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after a bit of talk about how dams have finally made the land “useful” it digresses into how eels are trapped and sold.
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There was also a trade in eels between the monasteries. I don’t know if the monks of Peterborough Abbey- now Peterborough Cathedral- received any rent in eels for land they owned, but they did own a limestone quarry at Brackland. The monks of Ramsey and Ely paid Peterborough in eels for the right to quarry stone there- so the stone used to build Ely Cathedral was paid for in the eels that the city is allegedly named after:
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Does that mean one of the closing events of 2020 will be a plague of eels?
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But you’re probably not within walking distance of this place, I’m guessing.
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There’s an interesting podcast episode about the place of Eel Pie Island in rock history http://www.kitchensisters.org/present/eel-pie-island/
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I guess that goes some way to explaining it. Eel fishing must have been the industry there.
The last year there actually were any eels, it seems… (nearby counted numbers dropped about 90% the next year).
Also “eel escalator” amuses me greatly.
Don’t worry, the practice eventually stopped. Well, at least the use of eels did. They replaced the eels with ginger, giving us the expression “to ginger up” (to make something lively or exciting). Much better than “to eel up.”
And in butter cookies.
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I don’t think I’d ever heard that expression. But where I come from, we just call that ‘figging’.
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No, I try not to go west of Hyde Park
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now this is interesting to me as “England” is actually called “Anglia” in Hungarian.
And “eel” is “angolna,” while “English” is “angol.” Never thought there might be an etymological connection between these words.
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That’s a UK organization - and it’s not clear if they’re talking about UK eels or eels worldwide. Here in Mexico, the eels in specialty markets are Mexican eels, and are not a popular dish, so I suspect we’re ok. They’re so tasty!
You can take your perishin’ winkles and toss them back in the sea!
It’s jellied eels for me.
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