Jersey Black Butter
Black Butter is a concentrated apple preserve flavoured with spices.
It is called ‘Beurre Nièr’ in Jèrriais, the Norman-French dialect of the Island.
This is a very old and traditional farm-house delicacy of Jersey (see below), and the product is important not only in gastronomic terms, but as a constituent of the now declining, traditional rural culture of the Island.
It is made produced in the cider making season from a formidable list of ingredients:
14 cwt apples
113 gallons of cider
30 lbs of sugar
liquorice, cinnamon, and other spices in proportion
Boil up the cider and leave to simmer. Adding the apples and other ingredients in a cauldron (‘bachin’) hung over a low fire.
Stir continuously for 24 to 30 hours, until the correct ‘jammy’ consistency is achieved.
It can be served as a spread on bread or as a preserve to go with cold meats (traditional) or as a cool additive to an Indian curry (non traditional!)
Historic area of production, details about origins of product and ties to local groups:
Something similar to Black Butter is made in Normandy, the part of France with which Jersey has traditional and cultural ties.
The growing of apples and the making of cider is a traditional economic activity of Jersey, going back to 16th Century, and there are many Jersey varieties of apples. This activity diminished in the 19th Century, and despite some very recent endeavours to revive it, has now a negligible part in the Island’s economy.
In cider production’s ‘glory days’ in the 18th Century, Jersey was also a shipbuilding and cod fishing Island: many of the Islanders would farm for part of the year, and then go fishing for cod off Newfoundland and Canada for the other part of the year. Their catches would be salted, and often be transported by them down to the Catholic countries of South America. There, they would exchange their cargo for exotic spices for which there would be a good market in Britain.
This explains why there was a familiarity with spices and a ready availability of them in Jersey at this time.
In the cider season, making black butter was a good way of using up a seasonal glut of apples and any surplus of cider.
Black butter making is a very labour intensive operation but the labour of making it was almost coincidental to its importance in the Island’s social history.
Lots of labour was needed – so it was therefore a co-operative and community project which brought together friends and neighbours.
Lots of refreshment and lubrication was needed for the apple choppers and apple peelers, and the stirrers at the cauldron – it made for quite a festive
Lots of time was needed to make the black butter, and lots of stamina to keep awake during the night hours. So, music and songs helped to make the time pass quicker, and for those awaiting their turn as a stirrer there was dancing and cards and story telling – it comprised what is called, in Jersey-French ‘Un Séthée de Beurre Nièr’ (Un soir de beurre noir).
In effect, these were indigenous and ‘home-grown’ community events, an opportunity for the local culture was passed down from one generation to another.
In an age when there was no television or other entertainment, these BlackButter evenings provided a rare opportunity for hard-working farming people to get together and have some fun.
Area of Production:
Jersey Black Butter’s labour-intensive and lengthy making process does not lend itself to a commercial application.
One commercial outlet, La Mare Vineyards (Britain’s most southerly vineyard) makes it for sale, although it is made with only a five-hour strirring period.
Contact:
Slow Food Jersey: Emma Hefford davidmc9808@yahoo.com
The Jersey Ormer
Ormer (Jersey name) (Haliosis tuberculata), Abalone, Green Ormer (common name)
The Ormer has a fairly wide geographic range, of which the Channel Islands represents its northern limit. It extends to Senegal in Africa in the south, but the highest density occurs at the northern limit of this range.
The ormer evokes an emotive response from Jersey people, as it is a subject close to many hearts. It is no exaggeration to say that for many people ormering is part of Jersey life and long hours are spent, by young and old alike, searching for and gathering this delicacy.
The Ormer is like a flattened snail with a whorl, ear-shaped with iridescent mother of pearl inside and a greeny brown - almost rock coloured outer surface. They have 6 or 7 respiratory holes. Ormers can live for up to 15 years, by which time they can reach 150 mm in length. Much of the English furniture of the 18th/19th century with mother of pearl inlay is ormer shell from the Channel Islands. In typical snail like fashion, they attach to rocks on the seabed by a muscular foot. It is this foot along with the short stalk that is sought for food.
Following disease in the 1990s commercial gathering was banned. Limited gathering for personal consumption is permitted, but no diving or diving apparatus are allowed. Because they live on the lower shore, access to the areas can only be obtained on the big “spring” tides. As a further protection measure, a gatherer may only catch ormers on the day of the new or full moon and the 3 following days, between 30 Sept. and 1 May.
After all the difficulties of gathering them, they need to be boiled in fish stock for several hours otherwise they taste of fish-flavoured chewing gum. But an ormer stew, where the ormers have been steeped in juice for a long time until soft, is one of the joys of a Jersey winter.
Contact:
Slow Food Jersey: Emma Hefford davidmc9808@yahoo.com
Traditionally grown Jersey Royal Potatoes
Jersey’s early new potato and it’s most famous export can be found in most British supermarkets in the season – Easter to June.
They are small kidney-shaped potatoes with fragile, papery skins that rub off easily. Jersey Royals are graded into three sizes – ware, small ware and mids (the smallest). The texture is firm and waxy with an excellent nutty, earthy flavour. The distinctive flavour (which many attribute to the fertiliser), coupled with the fact that they are the first "new" potatoes of the year within the UK, has created a high demand for Jersey Royals. This demand has created its own problems, most notably the use of polythene to force the potatoes even earlier in the year.
Jersey has grown potatoes commercially since the early 19th Century, and was already exporting them to the British mainland in the days of sailing ships. In 1880, a Jersey potato grower called Hugh de la Haye saw, in the window of a potato merchant’s store, some comical looking potatoes with an unusually high number of sprouts, which were being shown off as an amusing curiosity.
He cut them up, and planted the pieces, each with its own sprout, in his garden. When he dug them up at harvest time, and boiled them, he found the taste much superior to his commercial farming crop. So he saved some as seed potatoes, harvested again the next season, gave his friends seed potatoes, and within a few years the so-called ‘Jersey Fluke’ potato was being sold commercially.
This was the high tide of British Imperialism in the late Victorian era, when anything good, or above average was christened ‘royal’ in respectful tribute to the Queen, so very soon the Jersey Fluke had become the Royal Jersey Fluke, and, for the past 100 years or so, the Jersey Royal.
Traditionally they were grown on steep south facing coastal slopes (Côtils), and of necessity could only be planted and harvested by hand. On flatter ground they can be mechanically harvested. Potatoes grown as a monoculture require chemicals to prevent disease. Traditionally they were grown in rotation, especially on dairy farms, where the manure was used for fertiliser. The other traditional fertiliser is "vraic" (seaweed).
For around 70 –80 years it had no competition within Britain. It was earlier than anything that mainland Britain could produce. However, by the 1960s and 1970s, potatoes were being imported from far-flung climes, thus the Jersey Royal was no longer ‘the earliest potato’ in UK retail outlets, and that helps to explain the decline of the Jersey Royal – a decline that is now beginning to accelerate.
The decline of the Royal is due almost entirely to globalised trading. In its heyday, it was the earliest potato you could buy. Now no longer – new potatoes come from Israel, Egypt, and a host of other places. They have lost their uniqueness. The Island has only about half a dozen commercial customers now for its crop – the giant supermarket chains, which buy 90 per cent of the crop.
There are still a very few farmers, who combine a herd of dairy cattle with a potato crop, and likewise a very few farmers, who fertilise their fields with vraic – Jersey seaweed, the natural fertiliser of Jersey fields throughout history. Again, there are a very few farmers who take the trouble to harvest the steepest sloping slopes (côtils), which, like vineyards, catch the early sun. It is these farmers that we have included within the Ark and whose potatoes shone through in blind tastings against those grown under polythene.
Contact:
Slow Food Jersey: Emma Hefford davidmc9808@yahoo.com
