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cured pilchards in this exhibition with those in the Spanish 

 division.* 



Unlike the mackerel, the pilchard is not sought for in its 

 fresh state out of Cornwall and West Devon. Our 

 fishermen* have tried many markets with it, but without 

 success. And this is the more remarkable seeing that the 

 fish is cheap, nutritious, and of exceedingly good flavour. 

 When tourists first found out West Cornwall, they very 

 soon found out pilchards, and more, they turned a little bit 

 of "chaff" against us west countrymen into a reality, at 

 their own expense. It used to be said of us that we ate 

 " cream with our pilchards," which of course we never did. 

 But when the tourist came down, he took it for granted 

 that he could eat clotted cream with everything, and he 

 insisted on having " cream with his pilchard," and he is said 

 to have got it, and to have found it so good a mixture that 

 now no large hotel gives broiled pilchard for breakfast 

 without itf 



But we have other ways of cooking them besides broiling. 

 We fry them and eat them with a sauce made of finely 

 chopped onions, salt, cold water, and nothing else ; it is 

 a very nasty sauce. And we eat them without any knives 

 or forks, with our fingers. I do not say that all of us do 

 this, but I have seen it done, and less than one hundred 

 years ago the practice was universal amongst the bulk of 

 our people. 



I hope to cure this want of a fresh pilchard market soon 



* There are two open barrels of the fish exhibited one at each end 

 of the westernmost case in the Spanish Court. One is labelled 

 "pressed sardines," and the other "salted sardines," but they are 

 both of them pilchards, more cleanly cured than is our wont. 



f I can speak to the excellency of clotted cream as a [sauce with 

 broiled pilchard from personal experience. 



