Sonia Hillsdon

A Taste of Jersey

Traditional Island recipes, given with their English and Jèrriais names, together with a description of a typical Jersey kitchen from time past.  

From the book:  

The Old Jersey Kitchen
La Tchuîsinne Jèrriaise

The kitchen was the lively centre of the traditional granite Jersey house. Here the cooking was done, the family were fed, and precious leisure hours were spent. The focal point of the kitchen was its open fire, kept alight with wood and dried seaweed, know locally as 'vraic'. Into the back wall of the fireplace was built the oven, often in a beehive shape, whose wooden door was sealed with fresh cowdung to keep the temperature inside constant.

Most of the cooking in time past was done by boiling, so a swinging iron bracket, with adjustable hanging devices from which to suspend the pot or kettle over the fire, was an important feature. Pots were also placed on the paradoxically-named tripod, or trépid, which had four legs.

On the mantelshelf above the fire were the important hour-glass to time the cooking by and hanging flagons. There could even have been a glass roller, introduced to Jersey by sailors, either having pride of place as an ornament or used to roll pastry, Also above the fireplace would be a rack holding the implements needed for baking. These included a fork for putting the fuel in the oven, a rake for pulling out the ashes, a mop for washing out the oven before putting in the bread, plus a shovel called a 'peel' for putting the uncooked dough in the oven and taking out the baked loaves. What a performance baking would have been in those days!

Alongside the fireplace were stone niches to store those things that needed to be kept dry. Amongst these would have been the lamps, the tinderbox to light them and any food that required moisture-free conditions. The already-dried cod fish, an important part of Jersey diet in those refrigerator-less days, would be hanging from the ceiling.

The other furniture in the kitchen would have been the table and chairs for the family's meals, a locally-made dresser on which to display the crockery and pewter (sometimes even the Bible and Prayer Book) and often a grandfather clock, again made locally.

As the kitchen was the warmest room in the house, it was also used for keeping busy in the long winter evenings, and the pursuit to which most Islanders were addicted was knitting. This brought in welcome extra money. There would be the spinning wheel, the wool winder and a box-like settee, filled with bracken on which the knitters of - both sexes - would sit. So would pass the long winter evenings, with the knitters meeting in each other's kitchens - never the same one two nights running and knitting their stockings or jerseys by the hanging light of the oil-wick 'cresset' for sale in St Helier market. They would gossip, tell stories, sing, eat lard au fou (bacon) and drink home-made cider, as their needles clicked busily away in the Jersey kitchen as it used to be.

Jarrolds £1.60
Order from the Société Jersiaise  

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