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JEREMY:
Hello and welcome to another helping of anchovies with me, Jeremy
Cherfas.

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This episode is sort of an extension of the one before, though you
don't need to have heard that one to enjoy this one, and actually you

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can listen to them in any order.

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I think each extends the other.

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Last time Marcela Garcés explained how the anchovy is an essential
element in Basque and Spanish cuisine, and the Spanish really

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should know; they eat more anchovies than anyone else, 2.69kg per
person per year.

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That's more than a tin a week.

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I got that figure from a new book called A twist in the tail,
subtitled How the Humble Anchovy Flavoured Western Cuisine.

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And the astonishing thing is that until about 100 years ago, Spain --
with the exception of the sensible folk around Malaga, Spain -- was

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almost unique in Western Europe in ignoring anchovies completely.

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It wasn't until after the Second World War that they really got into
them in a big way.

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And it wasn't even Spaniards who built their anchovy industry.

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CHRIS:
A series of Italians ended up in northern Spain and basically created
the modern anchovy industry in Spain.

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JEREMY:
That's Chris Beckman, author of that new book, A twist in the tail.

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And this tale begins in the 1870s.

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CHRIS:
The story goes that an Italian ambassador was touring northern Spain
along the Cantabrian coast and along the Basque coastline,

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and he was talking to locals, and he'd heard about all these
anchovies in the Bay of Biscay that they simply were not interested

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in. And in fact, they had mentioned that most of the anchovies they
caught as bycatch they were using to fertilize fields because nobody

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was interested in them.

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Flash forward about a year later, he's back in Naples, Italy, and
he's mentioning this story to one

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Angelo Bartolomeo, who's a big Italian seafood distributor.

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And he basically says there are all these anchovies in northern Spain
for the taking.

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So Bartolomeo outfits a ship, sends it off on kind of a recce, a test
run, and sure enough, they hit a gold mine.

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I mean, they filled the ship in three weeks.

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It returns back to Italy and that started the whole phenomenon.

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JEREMY:
So when you say he filled the ship with anchovies, these are salted
anchovies?

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CHRIS:
Yes, that's correct.

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And they actually processed them right there on the deck of the
sailing ship because they didn't have a factory at that time.

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There were Spanish-owned factories processing hake, bonito, sardines,
but nobody was processing these anchovies, so they basically

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processed them in barrels with salt, packed them in, started the
fermenting process, and then the anchovies fermented en route back to

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Italy, arriving in time to be sold on the Italian peninsula.

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JEREMY:
And presumably, you know, Bartolomeo made a packet with this venture
and that kept him going back.

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CHRIS:
That's right. That's exactly.

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So what he did is he started sending out agents that worked for him.

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And initially it was just a number of them, maybe 4 or 5 in different
towns.

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They set up basic little salting factories.

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And what's interesting is they were very much welcomed in both the
Basque and Cantabrian coastline because they weren't a threat to the

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Spanish canneries, because they weren't trying to buy the fish the
Spanish canneries were buying, and it opened up a new market for the

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Spanish and Basque fishermen.

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And there was even a bonus on top in that the Basque, Spanish,
fishermen's, their wives and kids got to go work in the factory.

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So it was really kind of one of these win-win situations where they
were welcomed and it increased the economics of the whole

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coast.

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JEREMY:
The Spanish, did they show any interest in anchovies at that point, 
the Spanish canning factories?

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CHRIS:
No. Not initially.

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And a decade or two later, the Spanish realized this was a real
viable market.

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But it was a tricky thing because the Italian processors that were
salting these anchovies, they basically had the market locked up.

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Because you have to remember, at this time in Spain, the Spanish
weren't eating anchovies.

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Now that's mostly the Catholic North I'm talking about.

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There was, in the south, Malaga that was eating deep fried anchovies,
but for the most part, most of the country absolutely did

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not eat anchovies.

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And what's interesting is that goes back historically several hundred
years.

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JEREMY:
So the Spanish canneries ...

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Let me get this straight. The Spanish canneries are focusing on
higher value fish, to them, and the anchovies are just trash.

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But for the Italians, the anchovies are a big deal.

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But they're still salt anchovies.

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And most people today, I think ...

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Well, very few people today are interested in salt anchovies.

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Mostly we buy them in tins.

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And that also happened in northern Spain.

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CHRIS:
That's right. And this is one of those wonderful stories.

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It's one of my favorite because ...

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So one of the agents Bartolomeo sends out is a guy named Giovanni
Vella and he's from Trapani, Sicily.

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And he is ... Trapani was a big salting town, and he basically, 
Giovanni Vella worked in North Africa.

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He winds up on the wharves of Naples, where he somehow meets
Bartolomeo.

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Bartolomeo backs him, sends him to northern Spain.

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And he sets up shop.

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JEREMY:
You say he's from Trapani?

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He works in North Africa.

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Is he a salter by profession?

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CHRIS:
That's right. He kind of grew up in this salting trade.

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Because Trapani is famous for its salt flats.

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And they salted a lot of fish that then got exported to the mainland
of the Italian peninsula.

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So he had that background and he had honed his skills in North Africa
because there wasn't enough work for everyone in Sicily.

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And that's how he ends up in the Cantabrian coast, where he meets
Dolores Inestrellas, a lovely Spanish woman living in the town of

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Santoña, and they end up getting married.

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And this is where it's really delightful, because a couple of years
after they get married, he builds his first fishing boat to go out and

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catch anchovies, and he names it Dolores.

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A couple of years after that, he builds a factory.

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He names his brand La Dolores.

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And sure enough, after that, when they have a daughter, Dolores.

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JEREMY:
But he's still doing salt fish at this point.

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CHRIS:
That's right. And because that was the big moneymaker back in Italy,
that's what the Italians wanted.

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And the impetus -- because Vella basically is who they attribute the
invention of oil packed anchovies to

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-- and the impetus was, he was trying to crack the Spanish market
because his factories would go gangbusters for about two

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months of the year during peak anchovy the season, but they were
basically sitting idle for most of the year, and he kept trying to

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figure out why wouldn't the Spanish eat anchovies?

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Because they just weren't interested in salted anchovies.

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There are a number of reasons for that.

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But he started experimenting.

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He hired a chemist from Barcelona who came up to the north coast, and
initially they worked with butter, but they had real problems with the

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butter going rancid in the heat.

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But they finally got it to work.

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The formula with olive oil, packing the anchovy fillets in olive oil.

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Now, it didn't take off.

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It took a while.

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JEREMY:
Now the butter thing is interesting because in your book I read that
Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, retires to Spain, is very keen

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on fish, and he actually gets special shipments of potted anchovies,
presumably potted in butter.

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CHRIS:
That's right. He has them shipped in and kind of one of the great ...

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I mentioned that story to a Spaniard, and he was a little confused,
and he thought, Charles, that this was Spanish.

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He was like, well, why was this king eating anchovies?

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And I said, well, that actually explains it, because he was born in
Belgium, and he'd had a history of eating potted fish in northern

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Europe. So eating anchovies made a lot of sense to him.

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But at that time, the Spanish weren't basically eating any anchovies.

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And the best example of that, if you want to look at it in cookbooks,
um, there's one cookbook in 1520, the Art of Cookery by

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De Nola. And that's basically the first mention of anchovies in a
Spanish cookbook.

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There's not another mention for the next 225 years.

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And meanwhile, in England, France and Italy, they're filled with
cookbooks with anchovy recipes.

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So that kind of lets you ...

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fills you in, in a way of at least elite cookery.

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JEREMY:
So the Spanish elite just simply regarded them as trash.

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Okay, back to Vella.

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He's got this technique now for packing them in oil.

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Are they going into Spain at this point, or is he shipping them back
to Italy?

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CHRIS:
Well, he's actually trying to sell them anywhere.

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There's not much of a market in Italy for them.

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They really have a long tradition of salted ...

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That's a guaranteed product.

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Everybody's familiar with it.

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Because anchovies packed in oil in a tin at that time were more
expensive.

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That was actually a costlier way to do it.

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But very slowly it gets embraced by ...

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And there's no one exact way that brought these oil packed anchovies
to popularity.

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But one of the the contributing factors was French, because French
hotels, posh French hotels, started serving them in things like a

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salad, because now you had a very attractive fillet glistening with
olive oil, kind of draped on a salad.

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And then they would do things like anchovy toast.

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So it became kind of a posh thing.

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And then they were getting exported to America.

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And there there was a market.

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JEREMY:
Was all the investment in this, was this coming originally from the
profits of salted anchovies?

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CHRIS:
Yes. That's right.

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Exactly. So Vella was ploughing his profits from salted anchovies
into these oil packed anchovies, trying to create another

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market. Because really, what he wanted to do was to figure out how to
tap the Spanish market.

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And he wanted his factory to be working the other ten months of the
year, where it's just right now sitting idle.

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JEREMY:
But I don't quite understand this.

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Why, if the anchovy fishing peak happens for two months of the year,
how can the factory work the rest of the year just

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because they're putting them in oil rather than in salt.

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CHRIS:
Well, that's a good question.

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Basically what you could do is the salt packing anchovies in oil,
what you have to do is you first pack

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them in salt as you would traditionally.

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They go through a certain maturing process.

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Now some of that process often happened as the sailboat went back to
Italy, and the warmer the weather -- again, this is a fermenting

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product -- so the warmer it is, the faster it's fermenting.

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So by doing the fermentation in a factory with a set temperature, he
could control that.

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And then the packing.

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He then could clean those salted anchovies and then prep them and
then place them in oil, tin them and then ship them out.

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And that puts him in control of a much larger part of the production
line.

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JEREMY:
I see, I see.

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So it's a question of spreading it out and ...

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But on the voyage back did the salted anchovies, did they stay in
good condition?

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CHRIS:
Well, that's a very good question.

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And it speaks to exactly why Vella was so anxious to develop new
markets on his own, because actually, all the anchovies

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they shipped back to Italy were sold on consignment.

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So Vella only got paid when those anchovies were sold on the Italian
peninsula.

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And that created problems for him, because often the shipments would
get delayed in transit and the anchovies would overripen.

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You know, in these hot holds where it was, you know, 35, 40 Celsius
and the anchovies are simply maturing too fast in the barrel.

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So that all played into the desire for all these independent salters
to create new markets.

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JEREMY:
And how how quickly was Vella copied?

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I mean, you know, like with the salt anchovies, did people see this
and say, oh, I want part of that.

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CHRIS:
You know, interestingly enough, no.

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It took quite a while, and there's no exact consensus, but it took
about a decade before it started to really take

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off, and it just wasn't embraced.

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And I think a lot of that has to do that there was a price factor.

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There was a jump up in cost.

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And I think people at that time, you know, for the most part, just
just couldn't afford it.

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JEREMY:
But you say the French were making it chic.

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Were elite Spaniards becoming interested in canned anchovies as a
result of the French making it chic?

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CHRIS:
Yes, exactly.

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That's how they kind of were taking their culinary cues from France.

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And this had been going on, mind you, for about 200 years.

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You know, at the Spanish court their menus were written in French.

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Dishes were served in French cuisine and you know, indeed, not just
in Spain, in Italy.

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And French cuisine was considered the dominant, sophisticated cuisine
that every elite wanted to eat.

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And so when the French started including them, then the Spanish
elites started following their cues and very soon started embracing

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them on their own.

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JEREMY:
Okay. So at at present, the Spanish are the world's top anchovy
eaters.

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They eat something ridiculous like 2.

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... What have you got in your book?

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2.69, 2.7, almost 3 kilograms per person per year.

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How did that happen?

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CHRIS:
This is an absolutely crazy story that you would never think would be
how anchovies got popularized in Spain, because you have to remember

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again, they weren't eating anchovies.

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Nobody. Not the poor, not the middle class.

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Not elites. Nobody was eating anchovies.

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But a good place to start to untangle this is with Franco,
interestingly enough.

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And General Franco and the Civil War, he instituted a policy of
self-sufficiency and it went terribly awry and basically led to

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huge food shortages, disastrous food shortages.

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And this period of Spanish history is kind of known as the misery,
because over half the country was basically starving.

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And so what you found is, for the first time, they're shipping fresh
anchovies from the coast into Madrid because people are

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starving. Now again, 30, 40, 50 years ago, they wouldn't eat those.

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If they wanted fish, they could buy bacalao, right?

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Dried cod for not much more money and they got a big piece of fish.

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But now they're starving for anything they can get.

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So they're starting to eat fresh anchovies.

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They're starting to eat salted anchovies, and they're starting to eat
oil packed if they have the money.

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JEREMY:
And that's because transport has improved.

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So you can actually get fresh fish on ice by truck or by railway into
the centre of the country.

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CHRIS:
That's right. That's exactly right.

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And then another factor that plays into this is times were so tough,
everyone was so poor.

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And post-World War Two, you know, Italy got jumpstarted by being part
of the Marshall Plan, which injected ...

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was a huge cash infusion that stimulated, helped to stimulate the
economy.

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Spain was ruled out of the Marshall Plan because of Franco was still
in power, and it just simply languished.

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So many Spaniards worked two jobs.

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It was very common that people worked two jobs.

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And so what they started doing is, after they would finish one shift,
en route to their second shift, they would stop in a taberna and get a

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quick bite to eat.

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And suddenly tapas became the perfect solution to this problem
because it was a salty, wet ,,, Taberna owners loved them because it

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made people want to drink more.

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Right? When you have a salty potato chip or a peanut or an anchovy,
you're going to drink more.

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And it gave a little sustenance.

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And tapas are a funny thing.

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They're they're ...

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It's a way of eating.

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It's not a meal.

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It's not an ingredient.

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It's kind of a funny Spanish way of eating, where it's you're having
these almost snack like things between meals, and anchovies just fit

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the bill to a T.

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JEREMY:
And the same is true for pintxos in the Basque Country, that it's the
same principle there.

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Yes. So what are inventive chefs doing?

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Or maybe they're not chefs.

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Maybe they're just taverna owners.

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But what are they doing with anchovies that makes them so attractive
that the Spanish are eating almost three kilos a year of them.

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CHRIS:
You know, Jeremy, I wish I had a good answer to that question.

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It's one of these mysteries.

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It just seems to be the right kind of way of eating for the right
people at the right time, where they're just tapas mad.

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I don't have a good explanation for that.

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JEREMY:
But it's incredibly strange that for, I don't know, nine-tenths of
their history, they wouldn't eat an anchovy if you paid them

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to. And then suddenly they go anchovy mad.

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And do they, do modern Spaniards realize this aspect of their
culinary history?

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CHRIS:
You know, it's interesting.

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I'll tell you a quick little story.

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When I was writing the book, I went to northern Spain, actually,
Santoña.

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I was doing research, and one day, I'd been in the museum.

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That evening, I went to a bar, and I was having a bite to eat, some
anchovies and a glass of wine, and a gentleman saw me, and he was very

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pleased, the Spanish gentleman, to see me eating anchovies.

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And he said, you know, that's really wonderful.

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You know, I love anchovies.

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It's great to see you eating them.

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You know, anchovies are in our blood.

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My family's been eating them for 500 years.

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And, you know, I was a guest.

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I didn't really want to contradict him.

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But actually, I wanted to say.

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Well, not really.

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A hundred years ago, your relatives were using them on your fields.

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So it's an absolutely fascinating phenomena how the pendulum has
swung in Spain with anchovies.

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JEREMY:
Did you disabuse him of his what I call invented tradition?

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CHRIS:
I did not, I have a special place in my heart for invented traditions,
because I think we all carry them around.

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And as an American, I'm particularly prone to invented traditions
because I notice a lot of Americans have ...

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They don't, we don't have a strong idea of our background the way
some Europeans do.

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So we're filled with invented traditions.

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So I let him relish that one.

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JEREMY:
Christopher Beckmann, whose new book is called A twist in the tail:
how the humble anchovy flavoured Western cuisine.

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Link in the show notes as usual, and you'll find them at
EatThisPodcast.com.

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I should add that Spain is just one of the countries that Chris
covers in meticulous detail.

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Ancient Rome, France, Britain and Italy all get a look in alongside
Spain.

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He even devotes some time to anchovies in America and a history of
Caesar's salad.

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All of which made me wonder what inspired him to write the book.

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CHRIS:
You know, it started when I was in my 20s and I was flat broke, and I
was living in Los Angeles, and I noticed this ...

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I mean, I always ate a lot of different foods.

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Anchovies were simply one of many different foods.

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But I noticed if I had friends over and I made a very simple pasta, I
mean, literally some pasta, maybe a little garlic, a little olive oil,

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and a can of crushed tomatoes.

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If I just simply added a little anchovy to that, it was
transformative.

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And when I would serve that, everyone liked it.

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But if I mentioned at the end of the meal, did you notice?

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You know what? What did you think? There were anchovies.

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I could see in a friend a little, kind of a little ...

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Their expression would change.

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And if I mentioned before dinner there was an anchovy in it, often
somebody wouldn't even try it.

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So there was something about anchovies that people have this love
hate relationship to.

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JEREMY:
Yeah, but ending up writing a whole book about anchovies, that's
taking it a bit far.

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CHRIS:
You know, I tried to let anchovies go, but I just couldn't.

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And so later on, when I got into archaeology, I kept gravitating
back to food.

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Looking at why people ate foods the way they did at certain times in
history.

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And I was always consistently bothered over the years about what is
it with anchovies that is so divisive?

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And basically, eventually I just had to sit down and buckle up and
write the book to try and get to the bottom of it.

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JEREMY:
And I'm really glad he did.

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Absolutely fascinating stuff.

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My thanks, then, to Chris Beckmann, to you for staying the course and
to the generous people who help the show with their donations.

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You can join them at EatThisPodcast.com/supporters.

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Till the next time -- and no more anchovies for now -- from me, Jeremy
Cherfas and Eat This Podcast, goodbye and thanks for listening.