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Cockles, Boiled
Cockles should be washed in two or three waters, and the shells well scrubbed with a hard brush, then put into salt and water, not over strong, to cleanse themselves. They are best roasted on a tin laid on a stove, and eaten while hot, with bread and butter and a little pepper and vinegar. To boil them, put them in a clean saucepan, with a table-spoonful of water at the bottom of the pan, and a clean towel laid over them. Shake the saucepan constantly, to prevent them burning. As soon as the shells open they are cooked enough. They may be dressed in all the ways, excepting frying, practised with oysters and mussels. Time, five minutes. Probable cost, 3d. per quart. Sufficient, allow one pint for each person.
A method rather than a formula: cockles cooked in their own liquor with barely a spoonful of water. Two things decide whether it works — the purge beforehand and knowing when to stop.
- The hinge: stop the moment they openFive minutes is the outside limit for a pan of cockles, and most open in two to three. Once open they are done; another minute shrinks them to gristle. Lift them out as they gape rather than waiting for the last stubborn one.
- Purging out the grit"Salt and water, not over strong" is usually read as something near seawater strength — about 35 g of salt per litre, or 2 tablespoons per quart. Fresh water kills them and they spit out nothing. An hour or two in the fridge, then lift them from the water rather than pouring, so the sand stays behind.
- Sorting before and afterDiscard any cockle that is broken, or that stays open when tapped, before cooking. Discard any that refuses to open after cooking. The book assumes a cook who already knows this.
- "Roasted on a tin laid on a stove"The stove here is the flat cast-iron top of a range, used as a griddle. A heavy dry frying pan over medium-high heat does the same job — the shells pop open and the liquor sizzles in the shell.
- The towel over the panA damp cloth laid over the cockles traps steam in place of a tight lid. A lid works, and is safer near a flame; a loose cloth over a gas ring is not.
- QuantityA pint per person means a pint of cockles in the shell, perhaps 350 g or so, which yields only a small quantity of meat. As a first course or a snack with bread and butter that is right; as a main dish it is thin.
- Cost3d. a quart made cockles one of the cheaper items in the book — street food sold from barrows. Today they are a specialist purchase, and worth buying from a supplier who can say where and when they were harvested.
- "All the ways practised with oysters and mussels"Cross-references to the oyster and mussel entries. The exception for frying is sound, since a shelled cockle is small and lean enough to toughen instantly in hot fat.
Cockles were long one of the cheapest proteins in British coastal towns, gathered by rake from tidal sand flats at Leigh-on-Sea, Penclawdd on the Gower, and Morecambe Bay, then sold cooked and shelled by weight, dressed with pepper and vinegar — the same seasoning Cassell's gives here. That vinegar-and-pepper habit belongs to a whole family of Victorian shellfish stalls that also sold whelks, winkles and jellied eels, and it is the reason cockles appear in a household dictionary alongside far grander dishes: they cost pennies and needed no skill beyond washing and watching. The entry's careful insistence on two or three waters, a hard brush and a salt-water soak reflects the real problem with a sand-dwelling bivalve rather than any fussiness. Picking cockles remained a family trade well into the twentieth century, and the tidal beds are still worked commercially in Wales and north-west England.** **Note: the Morecambe Bay and Gower fisheries are documented traditional grounds; the specific street-selling detail is drawn from general accounts of Victorian London shellfish trade.}