In parts of the country as many as a quarter of the population were engaged

In parts of the country, as many as a quarter of the population were engaged in catching, curing and distribution The railways even ran herring trains. Bloater, whole, ungutted smoked herring with a slightly gamey taste, became a great delicacy in the gentry’s crustless tea-time sandwiches.But it remained primarily the food of the poor. But that is another story.By the Victorian era, kippers a curing process which had been invented in the 1840s by John Woodger, of Seahouses in Northumberland, brought the demise of the red herring, a tougher and drier victual whose success had been that it transported well inland and abroad. The people were plunged into such want and penury that they began smuggling potatoes from North Meols and Ormskirk on the mainland. Bishop Wilson called his clergy to account for disgracing “their callinge … by vendinge ayle and beer and keeping victuallinge houses” in which “many of the people became not only tipplers, but infamous for sottishness and drunkenness”.Yet by 1711 so grave was the failure of the herring that the bishop inserted into the litany a prayer to be read in all the churches on the island “that it may please God to restore and continue to us the blessings of the sea”. with water and butter milk to drink (beer and ale being available only on market days).

In Sweden, herring is fermented to make surstr?ng, which emits a strong, foul smell when the can is opened (the trick is to open the can under water, or eat the stuff outside) From early on, the recipes were highly sophisticated. One Manx recipe for minced herring pies includes almond paste, fish roes, dates, gooseberries, rose water and saffron.But the shoals of the silver darlings were far from predictable The ordinary folk of Europe got used to feast and famine. Chronicles from the Isle of Man record that in 1648, local people lived on herring, salt, butter and oatcakes. It was eaten raw, fresh, salted, cured, pickled and fermented The Germans created the soused roll-mop. The Dutch came up with an enzyme-cured delicacy with raw, shredded onions The English invented smoking then kippering.

Mrs Beeton was even suggesting flavouring herring with cloves. The Flemish dreamt up a salad of smoked herring and warm potato.Great secrecy developed across Scandinavia about the best marinade with tarragon, cherry, sherry and curry as the defining extra ingredient. In the days before refrigeration, the herring and the cod could be easily cured, and thus eaten far from the point of capture. The growth of the herring trade was one of the reasons for the foundation of the Hanseatic League, the first free-trade organisation in Europe. The merchants of the city of Hamburg, who had easy access to the salt mines of Kiel (salt being essential to the smoking process) forged an alliance with the merchants of Lubeck, who monopolised the rich herring stocks off the coast of Sweden.The huge hauls of herring created great wealth for Danish, English, French and Dutch traders whose governments built and deployed great naval forces to protect them, creating the sea power which became the basis of the colonial era.Such was the primacy of the herring, that there developed as many recipes for preparing it as there are days in the year. The herring, says Alan Davidson in The Oxford Companion to Food , is the fish which had the greatest influence on the economic and political history of Europe.After the process of smoking fish was discovered in the 12th century the herring began to rival the cod for importance. So large were the quantities consumed that a 17th century French physician, observing increased levels of sexual ardour during Lent, blamed the poor fish.

It entered into our mythology too, with folk tales of jewellers who wrought herrings from sterling silver to attract the itinerant shoals.It played a huge part in the continent’s religion. Medieval Catholic Europe’s huge demand for it, during Lent and fasting days, laid the foundation of the Dutch empire Amsterdam, it was said, was built on herring bones. The herring has moved in great, wide, spawning shoals around our littoral waters, plundered by gulls and gannets, with the rhythm of each year. The Romans, a warm-watered Mediterranean type, had a blind spot for the fish. But when the Anglo-Saxons arrived, herring fishing began to develop. By the 6th century, drift nets were at work off Great Yarmouth, though fishing was then restricted to the great rivers and estuaries into which certain members of the herring family would ascend in big shoals to spawn in fresh water.From that, the herring became an essential part in the diet of the peoples of northern Europe, and in the centuries that followed, it formed a staple food of the ordinary people.

And if that sounds fanciful consider Mrs Hendrikje van Andel-Schipper She was, until this week, the world’s oldest person. She died in her sleep at 115, after eating a herring every day. It worked for her.The humble herring is not a fish much in fashion. But for nigh on two millennia it has been the secret which sustained the peoples and empires of northern Europe. The cool temperate waters around our islands and the north-west coast of the continent have teemed in huge quantities with the silver sparkle of this steely, bluish-green-backed fish with the glistening silvery belly.