The store-cupboard superstar

Nothing beats griddled sardines fresh from the sea, but, tinned, these iridescent beauties can be feasted upon year-round, celebrates Tom Parker Bowles

- Tom Parker Bowles

PILCHARDS. Cold and rudely fishy, tainted with the sullen tang of tin. Even the name sounds glum and parsimonious, an edible dirge, a drab piscine lament. It’s little wonder they ranked somewhere between liver and Spam on the school edible index of disgust, sitting despondent in their wan tomato sauce, dumped upon an arid slice of toast. More glorified cat food than teatime delight, tinned pilchards were something to endure, rather than enjoy, lumpen fodder for the terminally dull.

But pilchards, tinned or fresh, are simply sardines with a mortgage and an ever-expanding gut, bigger, older versions of those lithe and sprightly youths. They do suffer, unfairly, from an image problem, as, treated with suitable care, they can be excellent. Anyone who has tasted a tin of Cornish pilchards from The Pilchard Works (www. pilchardworks.co.uk) will agree.

There’s long been a pilchard fishery in Cornwall (they’re now known as ‘Cornish sardines’) and one boat, a couple of centuries back, landed 80,000 in a night. Those fishing by day would use a ‘huer’, sat on a nearby cliff, in search of teeming shoals. Once spotted, using a furze bush in each hand, he’d direct the fishermen towards their silver-bellied bounty. Meanwhile, the locals would rush around crying ‘Hev’ah, Hev’ah’ like a town possessed. ‘The whole scene,’ notes Alan Davidson wryly in North Atlantic Seafood, ‘must have been baffling for stray visitors.’