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Laver, to Dress
Laver is a plant which grows upon rocks near the sea-shore, and is valued on account of its anti-scorbutic qualities. It is generally boiled down to a jelly as soon as it is found, then potted, and sent to distant places for use. To dress it, put a pound into a bright stewpan with three ounces of fresh butter, squeeze over it the juice of a lemon or a Seville orange, and stir it with a silver fork until quite hot. Serve it as hot as possible, either over a lamp or a hot-water dish. The taste for laver is an acquired one. Instead of the butter a little gravy may be put into the pan, but lemon-juice should never be omitted. Sufficient for three or four persons. Probable cost, uncertain. To prepare fresh laver, which is in season from October to March, soak it in two or three lots of fresh water, an hour in each, to free it from salt; then boil it in hot water until soft and mucilaginous, strain through a sieve, add a few drops of lemon-juice, and serve very hot. It is especially good with roast mutton. The purple laver is considered superior to the green variety.
Two recipes in one entry: the first dresses ready-cooked potted laver, the second starts from the fresh seaweed. Both hinge on acid — the lemon juice is not a garnish but the thing that makes laver palatable.
- What laver isLaver is Porphyra (and related species), the red seaweed sold in Wales as laverbread and in Japan, dried and pressed, as nori. The "purple laver" the book prefers is Porphyra umbilicalis; the green variety is likely a sea lettuce (Ulva), which is coarser and less gelatinous.
- Buying it ready-cookedThe pound of laver in the first method is already boiled to a jelly — Welsh laverbread, sold in tubs at fishmongers and by mail order, is exactly the product intended. Do not substitute dried nori sheets; they will not reduce to the same purée without long soaking and simmering.
- The silver forkThe book also asks for a 'bright' stewpan. Victorian recipes commonly specify silver for acidic or strongly flavoured dishes, on the assumption that base metals taint them; whatever the reasoning, any stainless or enamelled pan and a wooden or stainless spoon will do the same job.
- Fresh laver takes hours, not minutes'Boil it until soft and mucilaginous' conceals several hours of gentle simmering, topped up with water, before the fronds collapse into a dark purée. This is why the entry says it was boiled down and potted as soon as gathered.
- Soaking is not optionalThree changes of fresh water, an hour each, removes not only salt but grit, sand and small shells lodged in the fronds. Lift the laver out of the water rather than pouring it off, so the sediment stays behind.
- Where you gather itLaver absorbs what is in the water around it, so wild-picked fronds should come from clean open coast, well away from outfalls and harbours, and be cut above the holdfast rather than pulled off the rock.
- Seville orangeThe bitter Seville orange is a January-to-February fruit and a genuine alternative here, its sourness closer to lemon than to a sweet orange. Out of season, lemon alone.
- Serving hot"Over a lamp or a hot-water dish" means a chafing dish or a bain-marie; laver stiffens and turns pasty the moment it cools. The pairing with roast mutton is the classic Welsh and West Country one, alongside cockles and bacon at breakfast.
- YieldThree or four as a side; a pound of laverbread with 3 oz butter is a generous quantity for that number, and half the amount is plenty for two.
Laver's place in a Victorian cookery dictionary owes as much to medicine as to appetite: the entry leads with its "anti-scorbutic qualities", a reminder that seaweed was valued as an antidote to scurvy in a naval nation. Gathering and boiling laver is a long-established practice on the coasts of South Wales, Devon and Cornwall, and along the western Irish and Scottish shores; the Swansea market trade in laverbread was substantial enough in the nineteenth century that laver was, as the book says, potted and sent to distant places. The frank admission that "the taste for laver is an acquired one" is characteristic of Cassell's, which catalogued regional foods for a middle-class readership without pretending they were all universally liked. The same seaweed, dried in thin sheets rather than boiled to a jelly, is nori, unknown to the compilers.