Modern day dishes served by Jersey’s top chefs all promote the availability and excellence of local produce. The traditional dishes listed are not widely available but represent the variety of Jersey’s food heritage...
Bean Crock (Un Piot et des Pais au Fou)
Jersey bean crock is one of the island's best-known recipes. The mixture of dried beans, which are left to soak overnight, is placed in an earthenware jar and boiled. Onions, herbs and pigs trotters are added. The dish was originally eaten for breakfast, especially on Sundays but it is now more commonly eaten for supper, served with a large portion of crusty French bread.
Fiottes Balls of flour, sugar and eggs, cooked in milk and traditionally eaten on Good Friday.
Des Boudelots Apples baked in spicy dough.
La Soupe D'Andgulle (Conger Eel Soup)
Conger eel soup, garnished with marigold flower petals
Jersey Wonders (Des Mervelles)
Deep fried doughnut type of cake eaten hot or cold and shaped like a lovers’ knot. There is a belief that Jersey Wonders should not be made on a rising tide.
Vraic Buns (Gaches a Vrai)
These buns were eaten in the old days when farmers went to the rocks to cut vraic (seaweed) as fertiliser for the fields.
Black Butter (‘Le Niere Buerre’)
Between 1600 and 1700, twenty percent of Jersey’s arable land was made up of orchards. Cider was made by farmers to give to their staff, making up part of their wages. The island’s export trade in apples peaked in 1810 when 4.5 million litres left the island. A great tradition that exists as a result of Jersey’s proliferation of apples is the production of ‘black butter’ or ‘Le Niere Buerre’. Made from cider apples, the new cider is boiled over a fire for many hours - up to two days! When the cider is ‘reduced’ by half, apples, sugar, lemon, liquorice and spices are added. The mixture is continuously stirred with a wooden ‘rabot’ or paddle. Production of the butter is a very popular community event following each winter crop with traditional singing, dancing, storytelling and chatting going on into the early hours of the morning. Although not as common, the black butter evenings still take place. The tradition also exists further afield. In Pennsylvania USA, early immigrants took the custom with them but renamed it ‘Apple Butter’.
Visitors to the island can take part in a cider-making weekend at Hamptonne Country Life Museum, which takes place annually in October.
PTGH wish to thank Jersey Tourism for their help in providing the above information.
