We learned to smoke in Germany. We use very simple wood fired smokers, no electricity. There are two methods: hot smoking is a short process - about two hours - that cooks (over 90ºC) and smokes, and retains the succulence of the product, ideal for eel, duck, chicken and trout; cold smoking is a much longer, gentler smoke, about 15-20 hours over slow burning oakdust where there is no cooking, just curing by smoke alone, ideal for salmon, cheese, haddock, kippers and hams.

Smoking over wood fires is a skill, no control panel, just a draught control, just you and the fire! So it's always fun and challenging -like cooking in the great medieval castles, (though better hygiene!). We smoke daily in small batches, fresh to order. We use three types of wood: beech and apple for the eel, oak for all other products.

Before the invention of fridge and freezer, food was preserved in a number of ways:

• pickling or salting - the British Navy sailed for centuries on salt beef and pork and pretty dreadful it must have been!
• air drying like the hams of Italy and Spain or by laying food out to dry in the sun as is still done in Africa and India.
• smoking.

Early man probably discovered that the meat or fish he hung from the roof of the cave out of the way of the animals tasted better, lasted longer when exposed to the smoke of his fires. He would also have discovered perhaps though exchanging fish with coastal folk that the combination of salt and smoke made food even more palatable.

In old recipe books there began to appear directions for meat, hams and game to be salted then hung in the rafters above the fireplace. Certainly as the leisured gentlemen of the Victorian era took to fishing on the great Scottish salmon rivers the demand for smoking and curing grew. It would have been almost impossible to bring these beautiful fish back home fresh if one lived down south of the borders, but if they were smoked by the rivers they would travel safely.

In the early 1900's, following the pogroms of the Jews in Russia and central Europe, many refugees settled in London and, keen on their salmon and blinis, brought with them the craft of smoking. The London Brick Kilns as they were known were simple brick constructions - some of them may even have been privies! - where the fish were hung to smoke over slowly smouldering sawdust.

Eel in Somerset

While there is no history of smoking eel in Somerset, there is a long tradition of eel consumption. The Somerset Levels that flooded for months each year were rich in eel and provided the locals with an abundance of cheap, nutritious food.

The Domesday Book mentions that the abbot of Muchelney (the great island in Anglo-saxon) had the right to 1400 eels a year from the eel fishery of that place that produced 6000 eels a year, "the whole worth three pounds."

Even after the last war you could still buy from any blacksmith in the area an eel spear - it looked remarkably like a Greek trident - with which local people would fish the rheens and ditches. We have a number of them in the smokery shop that belonged to Ernie the shepherd who lived nearby.

In Victorian times local people constructed an eel rack across the mill stream at Hambridge to catch migrating autumnal eels - an important source of food, especially during the last war.  

Nathanial Spencer, on his travels in 1772, wrote
"The next place we visited was Langport...During the severity of the winter when the river is frozen up, the eels of which there are vast quantities, are taken in the following manner, the people approach the banks of the river, break the ice, where they think they are sheltered and pull them out with their hands."

Eel tales - quotes from eels on the Parrett

• "my wife do love a feed of elvers - they do make her proper frisky"
• "when Chard reservoir was drained, the eels were 6 foot long and barked like dogs"
• "this man was walking on the river bank with his missus when an eel fell on 'is head - it was a heron that dropped it, 'e'd been disturbed"

Natural History and Life Cycle

Elvers caught in the Bristol channel after their journey from the Sargasso

The eel is one of the most fascinating of all fish species. The European eel is believed to spawn in the Sargasso Sea, the larvae drift on the Gulf Stream for 3 years reaching European rivers as elvers. Some 15-20 years later, the adult eels, now fat and silver, return down river to make the long journey to the Sargasso - to complete their life cycle.