Elaine Hoare recalls her mother buying five fish for a shilling, while Michael Heaton draws readers’ attention to an Americanism
Your article (Whale meat curry for dinner? Study of bygone seafood recipes shows how UK tastes have narrowed, 13 October) reminded me of the call of “Fresh herring, fresh herring” from the herring man wheeling his cart in the back lane by our house in Douglas, Isle of Man, in the 1950s. My mother went to him with a bowl and bought herring for tea – five for a shilling, if I remember correctly. They were delicious. We cleaned them, scored each side three or four times, dipped them in oatmeal and fried them. We have a fish man from Grimsby call every Monday, but he never has herring.
Elaine Hoare
Chalfont St Giles, Buckinghamshire
• I am perplexed by the Marine Conservation Society’s suggestion that we should eat “wild-caught sea bass” as an alternative to cod (Scale back on hake and coley, seafood charity tells shoppers, 14 October). First, there is no such fish in Britain: “sea bass” is an Americanism they use to distinguish the marine bass from the several species of inedible freshwater bass in US rivers and lakes. We have only one species: bass. Second, it is insulting to suggest it as an alternative to cod. It is infinitely nicer than cod, but unsuited to battering.
Michael Heaton
Warminster, Wiltshire