Eel pie has been an important English food for a long time. Medieval cookbooks often included eel pie recipes, & everyone from peasants to kings at them.
In 1256, Henry III demanded eel pies from his bailiff at Fetcham! 1/8
Eel pie was so common that not knowing how to cook one was recognized sign of stupidity. In King Lear, there's a cook who was so far gone that she tried to eels in the pie w/o killing them first.
It doesn't mean much to us, but Shakespeare's audience knew better.
Hilarious! 2/8
Over time, eel pie became associated w/ London. Pie & mash shops were common, esp. in the East End, & there were several hundred in 19th century.
There aren't many left now, & E. End eel pies are kinda a tourist food. But you can still find an eel pie if you really need one. 3/8
Upstream from London is Eel Pie Island, which is famous for...well...it's eel pies! There's a legend that the name of the island comes from the time Henry VIII, on a boat ride upriver, stopped at the island & demanded pies.
It's a fun story, but probably not true. 4/8
Eel Pie Island wasn't just famous for eels pies. It was also well-known for live music. Many famous people, including Charles Dickens, frequented the island, both for its eels & its music.
Dickens wrote that it was a great place to dance to the music of a locomotive band. 5/8
That tradition continued! The island was important in the history of blues & rock in the 1950s & '60s. Pink Floyd, The Rolling Stones, The Yardbirds, The Who, Eric Clapton all played at the Eel Pie Island Hotel.
The hotel has burned down, but there's still @eelpiemuseum. 6/8
So today, as you're celebrating endless numbers and tucking into your favorite fruit pie, spare a thought for eels, too. Put on some Stones, kick back, and raise a glass to the eel pie: the pie that Henry III loved and that helped bring you rock 'n' roll. 7/8
And, if you really want to celebrate the day in style, you can order an Eeel Pi shirt, or mug, or just about anything else from "A Surprise of Eels!"
Did you know that the US government once tried to transplant east coast eels to California? Weird but true!
It's a fun story. Train loads of eels! Crashes! Loss! Pyrrhic victory!
So. Settle in, friends, for a thread about some well-trained eels. 1/8
Freshwater eels aren't native to the US Pacific Coast. All the eels in N. America come from the Sargasso Sea, & swim in waters that empty into the Atlantic or Gulf of Mexico.
There are lots of lampreys on the W. coast. But no native eels.
But they wanted some. Like you do. 2/8
So in 1873 the famous fisheries expert Livingston Stone, working for the US Fisheries Commission & the CA Fisheries Commission, got to work.
He got 1,500 eels from Martha Vineyard, & 40,000 eels from the Hudson River, put them in an "aquarium car" on a train, & headed west. 3/8
The Bayeux Tapestry is cool as hell. A 230 foot-long textile account of the Norman Conquest from the 11th C., with lots of fun details, including 626 people, 190 horses, 35 dogs, 32 ships, & 93 penises.
"Are there eels?" you ask. Of course there are eels!
Let's take a look! 1/8
They're in the border, underneath an early scene about the Norman campaign in Brittany.
Here, we can see the English wannabe king Harold Godwinson rescuing some Normans from drowning in the Couesnon River (Harold is the guy with a man on his back). 2/8
This is Harold's high point in the tapestry's story. He's saved the Normans from downing like a Baywatch lifeguard. He's a hero!
Also, this is the last time he appears before he swears allegiance to William of Normandy, giving the William a claim to the English throne. 3/8
We don't know exactly where, or how, eels get busy. It's a 2000+ year old puzzle. It's not like we haven't tried. But the sex life of eels is a mystery smothered in secret sauce. 1/5
All the eels in the Americas, Europe, and N. Africa are born at sea They migrate to land, live 10-20 yrs (or more!) and then go back to sea to mate & die.
They *probably* are all born, mate, & die in the Sargasso Sea. But we're not certain. 2/5
It's where we've found the smallest baby eels. And it's the area where radio-tracked eels have seemed to be gone before they disappeared.
But no one has yet tracked an eel to their mating ground. And no one has ever seen them mate in the wild. 3/5
It's 1200, and you're the Abbot of Ramsey (congrats!). At Lent your tenants come calling with their annual rents of preserved eels.
- 60,000 from Welles
- 4,000 from Chatteris
- 125 from Little Bedford
- 5260 from Wisbeck
etc.
So what do you do with all of these eels? 1/4
Well, you eat some of them.
The 60k eels from Welles works out to 164.3 eels per day. In 1200 Ramsey had about 80 monks in residence, and responsibility for several satellite cells.
So that comes to about 2 eels per monk per day (about 2 meals worth) for the year. 2/4
So you eat them. You also store them for special occasions, like when the king visits. But you can also use your eels to buy things!
In the 1250s Ramsey paid 4000 eels per yr. to Peterborough Abbey for the right to quarry stone to build the abbey. 3/4