Nettles

(music)

Liz: Hello and welcome to Bread and Thread, a podcast about food and domestic history. I’m Liz

Hazel: And I’m Hazel. We are two friends who studied archaeology together and love domestic history, and food history, and trying out making things, from history and otherwise, and we usually like to start before our main topic by talking about what we’ve been making or baking recently, so what have you been up to?

Liz: I have bad news and good news

Hazel: Can I take the bad news first

Liz: The bad news is I got up to the armpits on the gansey, and then realised I’d been making it in the wrong size, so I spent literally an hour frogging

Hazel: No!

Liz: It hurt both my soul and my arm

Hazel: As a fellow knitter, I can feel that deep in my soul

Liz: It’s bad

Hazel: Oh!

Liz: I got some maths wrong somewhere, but I immediately cast it back on, because I am nothing if not determined

Hazel: That is tenacious. I feel like it’s better to frog it, to rip it out straight away, though, rather than leaving it and then trying to do it, because if that’s me I just won’t

Liz: Oh yeah, same, and this is for someone

Hazel: Mmm

Liz: The good news though

Hazel: Ok, yeah

Liz: Is I made a mould of some dice masters that my sibling sent to me, I made a lid for that mould, and then I made dice in it

Hazel: Wait, are these the resin dice or the soap dice?

Liz: Resin dice

Hazel: Oh nice

Liz: Soap dice will happen eventually

Hazel: What kind of dice?

Liz: They are kind of a dark green, with a copper glitter in, and then I’m gonna, well by the time this comes out I will have done, ink the numbers in a copper, as well, so it’s got kind of a verdigris vibe

Hazel: That sounds awesome

Liz: And the set of masters came with a second d20, so my mould has a second d20. I can say this because when this episode goes out the person they’re for will have received the dice, I am making the second d20 into a pendant

Hazel: Amazing

Liz: ‘Cause imagine the power move of showing up to a D&D session wearing jewellery that matches your dice

Hazel: Oh! (laughs) That is so incredibly extra, and I love it

Liz: I may have to make D20 earrings at some point, just because there’s two d20s in there

Hazel: One of them should have the 1 facing out and the other one has the 20

Liz: That would be very good. So very much swings and roundabouts with me this week. What about you?

Hazel: Nothing that dramatic, I think. I made some wild garlic pesto

Liz: Ooh, tasty

Hazel: Yeah, it was good. I am enjoying wild garlic season while it lasts. Although it’s probably nearly over, I think. I should go check the patch, but that was good. I’m still knitting on my thing that I was last time

Liz: Your thing

Hazel: It’s many things, but you know, one of these days you’ll see me finish a knitting project

Liz: I believe in you. It can happen

Hazel: But I’ve just started…I’m going to a wedding on the 28th, and I’m making a dress for that, and I haven’t sewn a garment in a couple of years, I think, so it’s gonna go interesting, but I’ve had this fabric for five years, and the pattern, so we’ll see. It’s a very swishy dress, with pockets

Liz: You’ve gotta have pockets

Hazel: And it’s red and white polka dots. I’m enjoying it, but I’m on the stage of trying to lengthen the bodice, because I’m a little bit tall, and waistlines are always too high on me, so I’m trying to make it fit, but also this is the first time I’ve properly tried to adjust a pattern, so more on that as it progresses, I guess. I’ve got 4 weeks

Liz: Loads of time

Hazel: Yeah. But I’ve got Betty out again. Betty is my sewing machine. She’s doing good. She’s been going since at least the 1980s, and she is still in perfect working order

Liz: What is today’s episode on?

Hazel: Today, we are gonna talk about the humble stinging nettle

Liz: Ok! We’ve definitely brought nettles up in a few episodes

Hazel: We have, and I thought we’d done it, but then I saw it on our master list of episode ideas, and I thought we’d already done it, because, like you said, we’d talked about it so many times, but apparently we hadn’t done a full episode on nettles, so this is what we’re gonna do, and I’m just gonna start off by saying this is a pro-stinging nettle podcast

Liz: Hell yeah it is

Hazel: We love them. They are so good. There are so many things you can use nettles for, and they’re basically a superfood as well

Liz: Plus they’re super good for things like butterflies and bees and things

Hazel: Yeah, the pollinators!

Liz: If you have a garden, reserve an area to just let nettles grow. It’s good for everyone

Hazel: Yeah, and they make great compost as well. Oh man, just so many things. In fact, there’s so many things that you can use nettles for that I’ve had to split this up into the categories of medicinal, food, textiles, and folklore

Liz: Ok! We’re in for a ride

Hazel: We’re not taking the usual history timeline route on this one, it’s gonna be a nettle magazine, if you will, and one fact about nettles that I’m gonna start with, because it’s relevant for us, is that, archaeologically, you can spot former sites of habitation because nettles love to grow where there has been human habitation, with all the disturbed

Liz: How do they know?

Hazel: Disturbed ground, various animal/human waste and stuff. Because they have been observed growing in these massive clumps on sites where there previously was a house or compound or something, and because nettles have grown around people’s dwellings basically as long as people have been making dwellings, so you can tell because they’ll be in this abundant clump of nettles, and there’ll be, there just won’t be other nettles around. If it’s out of the usual place where you can find nettles, which is usually fairly moist areas. If it’s just the middle of a field and there’s a massive clump of nettles, that is a tell that there might be a former place of habitation or action there

Liz: That’s cool. Is that why they like graves so much, because of the disturbed earth?

Hazel: I guess so. That would make sense

Liz: I know there’s a lot of nutrients as well, a lot of plants like graves, but nettles and graves is a thing

Hazel: Hmm, ok. I thought that was a cool fact

Liz: That was a cool fact

Hazel: I’m gonna start with the medicinal uses. Nettles have been used medicinally for a really long time. It’s difficult to tell how far back they go, but they’re used in traditional Chinese medicine, going back hundreds, if not thousands, of years, and are still used today. They have really high levels of vitamins C and A, and they’re also very iron rich, and surprisingly high in protein

Liz: Protein?

Hazel: So they’re basically a superfood, they’re really good for you. Clinically, in terms of what evidence there is for nettles being an effective medicine, there’s not a lot of evidence, I think a lot of the time down to, like a lot of these things, no-one’s had the chance to do a lot of studies on it, really, so we don’t really know, but they’re definitely good for you, just if you eat them, and they have been used in medicine for quite a long time, most often as a remedy for rheumatic joints

Liz: I will admit I use them for inflammatory pain

Hazel: Mm-hmm

Liz: ‘Cause I’ve got the whole thing where my knee gets very cross at me sometimes

Hazel: Mm-hmm

Liz: Me and my mum, actually, have found nettle tea does help a little bit with that

Hazel: Cool. Yeah, I’ve read that they’re often, today, used in the form of a tea

Liz: Which is also really tasty

Hazel: Yeah! Oh yeah, I have your herbal blend with the nettle in it, that you send me

Liz: The squirrel juice

Hazel: The squirrel juice. It’s really good. (laughs) They were used as a traditional remedy for rheumatic joints. It’s thought that it was considered as well that, because they are stinging, and they cause swelling, that that might be one reason that people first put that together, because there are records of the Romans using them for that purpose, and also, I don’t know how true this is, I couldn’t find the original mention, but I keep reading about the Romans using them to stay warm in the cold British climate, by rubbing themselves with nettle leaves

Liz: This feels apocryphal

Hazel: (laughs)

Liz: That would hurt

Hazel: I don’t know, but then also, I was trying to figure this out, but I had difficulty finding them, the same place where I read that it was saying that it has a counter-effect if you’re already in pain, and then you rub nettle on it, apparently it counteracts that instead of causing pain? Don’t try this at home

Liz: This feels like something a Victorian wrote down once, and now people are just like “yeah, these are facts”

Hazel: It might be true, I’m not saying that it isn’t, but please don’t do it because I said so

Liz: Seems sus. I guess it might distract you? ‘Cause it’s more of an irritation

Hazel: Yeah, maybe

Liz: Like scratching an itch, and then you get distracted by the feeling of the scratching

Hazel: Yeah. Apparently, you know the whole dock leaf thing, where if you get stung by a nettle you’re supposed to find a dock leaf and rub it on that, and it will stop it stinging?

Liz: Oh yeah

Hazel: Apparently that doesn’t work, which has just

Liz: What?!

Hazel: Destroyed my whole world view

Liz: What?!

Hazel: I know

Liz: That is…I’ve always felt like it worked, that is a powerful placebo

Hazel: Yeah, me too! (laughs) But then again, maybe, like you said, maybe it’s that you’re rubbing it, so maybe that just distracts you from the stinging

Liz: I mean, I’m still gonna do it, because the placebo effect still works when you know it’s fake

Hazel: Oh yeah, absolutely

(both laugh)

Hazel: And also, looking for a dock leaf gives me something to do other than think about how much I got stung, so

(both laugh)

Hazel: The reason that nettles sting you is they have tiny, sharp hairs on them, which stab you when you touch them, and that injects the chemical compound that causes the pain and the swelling into your skin

Liz: You’re telling me nettles are venomous

Hazel: (laughs) I’m not sure it’s venom

Liz: It’s an injected poison (laughs)

Hazel: It’s just chemicals (laughs)

Liz: Everything’s chemicals, Hazel, nettles are venomous

Hazel: I guess technically

(both laugh)

Hazel: I’m not a biologist. But, and, again, don’t try this at home, unless you’ve really got some gumption, but if you grab them really forcefully that’s meant to stop them stinging you, or at least reduce the chance, because when the hairs are lying flat they’re not stinging you

Liz: That’s another one that I’ve heard, but never been brave enough to try

Hazel: Yeah, me too

Liz: ‘Cause if you grab it forcefully and it doesn’t work, then you’ve just stung your whole hand

Hazel: (laughs) I’m gonna stick to my gloves, thank you

Liz: Mmm. We have the technology

Hazel: (laughs) We do, but yeah, nettles are very good for you, although, and this is another medicinal property, but one that you want in its place, when you want this property. In my foraging book, it, which is the classic Food For Free, by the way, really good book, it says you don’t really want to pick them after the beginning of June, to eat, because the older leaves are a diuretic

Liz: Ok, so the longer you leave it, the more diuretic it is

Hazel: So basically they make you pee a lot. If you want that effect, that’s great, but if you’re wanting to have a nice soup, you want to keep it to the young, tender shoots, or just the tops of the nettle and the fresh leaves. They are also mentioned in the Nine Herbs Charm, which is something that I just learned about today, and is really cool. It is a 10th century Anglo-Saxon charm, medicinal charm

Liz: Mmm

Hazel: About 9 herbs, and one of them is the nettle, which in old English I think is pronounced stiðe (stee-fuh), it’s got the little d with the line through it, which I think is an f?

Liz: I would have to ask Nick

Hazel: According to the Nine Herbs Charm “nettle, it is called, it attacks against poison, it drives out the hostile one, it casts out poison, this is the herb that fought against the serpent, it has power against poison, it has power against infection, it has power against the loathsome foe roving throughout the land, put to flight now the greater poisons, though you are the lesser, until he is cured of both”

Liz: I wish to cross-stitch this

Hazel: (laughs)

Liz: That is incredible

Hazel: (laughs) It is so metal. It’s just…it’s the first time I’ve come across this, ‘cause pretty much most of the Anglo-Saxon poetry that I’ve read is either the battle stuff or riddle stuff, and this is…it’s like reading the battle stuff, but it’s about a plant

Liz: (laughs) A powerful ally, clearly

Hazel: It’s so cool. It’s one of these nine herbs that are meant to be the most powerful in driving out infection, and you’re supposed to, it says at the end of this poem that you prepare, you pound the herbs to a powder, you mix them with old soap and apple juice

Liz: Specifically old soap?

Hazel: Yeah, specifically old soap, apple juice, and you make a salve that you apply to the wound, and you have to sing the charm three times on each of the herbs before you prepare them, “likewise over the apple, and sing the same charm into the mouth of the man, and into both of his ears, and on the wound” before you apply the salve

Liz: Into his mouth?!

Hazel: Into his mouth

Liz: Ok (laughs)

Hazel: Again, I cannot comment on the efficacy of this charm, but it is metal as anything

Liz: Mmm

Hazel: And I love it. In terms of food, again, we know they’ve been eaten since prehistory, because they grow pretty much everywhere, they’re free, and they’re a good source of a lot of nutritional things and vitamins

Liz: Yeah

Hazel: It’s been eaten a lot of different ways. There’s nettle beer

Liz: Oh yeah, I’ve got a recipe for that somewhere

Hazel: You have

Liz: Yeah, my mum gave us a bunch of books of traditional recipes, and there’s one that’s just brewing

Hazel: Oh wow

Liz: And there’s a nettle beer recipe in there than I do want to try making at some point

Hazel: Please let me know if you do that, because that’s really cool. It seems to be, more or less a traditional country recipe

Liz: Yeah, the book is called Country Wines and Cordials

Hazel: Yeah, apparently the nettle is used for flavouring the beer, and it has a kind of herbal flavour. I was trying to find an old recipe or something, but I couldn’t really find any recipes before the early 20th century, although it’s thought that it’s just one of these country recipes that’s been around for a while

Liz: Yeah, feels like one of those things you wouldn’t necessarily write down, it’s just “well this is what I was taught to do

Hazel: Mmm, and it doesn’t seem at any point to have been a particularly popular beverage. It never became a commercial thing

Liz: Mmm

Hazel: It can also be used in place of rennet, to make cheese

Liz: Ok

Hazel: Yeah, which, apparently it is a bit harder, but you can use it to make nettle cheese, and not just as in a flavouring, I think I did the Cornish yarg

Liz: Oh yeah, ‘cause that comes wrapped in nettles, doesn’t it

Hazel: Yeah, yeah, so that sort of flavours the cheese, but this is talking about actually making cheese using nettles to curdle the milk in place of rennet, which I suppose would be vegetarian cheese

Liz: Yeah. Probably less of an invasive flavour than using something like vinegar or lemon juice

Hazel: Hmm. You can have the classic nettle soup, you can use it as greens. In eastern Europe, and Greece, it’s apparently used to fill savoury pastries. The one I read about in Greece was similar to a spanakopita, so it’s a filo pastry rolled up with a filling, but with nettles inside

Liz: Ok

Hazel: Which sounds very good

Liz: I would eat that

Hazel: And one story that I particularly liked about eating nettles as food was the story of Milarepa, which was an 11th century Tibetan religious figure, and the story of this guy is quite remarkable, if you wanna go and look him up, but basically he had many trials in his life, and ended up, he was looking for enlightenment, and he went off into a cave to meditate, and he lived on nettles during that time, and in Tibetan paintings Milarepa is often depicted as having green skin, and that is because the story goes that he lived on nettles for so long that his skin turned green

Liz: Amazing

Hazel: Yeah, but there’s quite a lot of stories about Milarepa, and one of them involves a few hunters who got lost, and didn’t manage to catch any game, and they found Milarepa, and asked him for some food, and he was like “well, I don’t have that much” so they were like “well we’ll just have whatever you’re eating”, so he gave them nettles, and they were just like “what are you doing? You can’t survive and become strong on this”, and then he gives them this whole talk about how he’s managed to become enlightened, gain buddahood, on this diet of nettles, so it’s a bit of a nettle smackdown

Liz: (laughs) Hopefully not actually with the nettles, though, that doesn’t feel very enlightened

Hazel: No, although I read about, I can’t remember where, but it was being beaten with nettles as a punishment

Liz: Of course

Hazel: Yeah. Anyway, moving on to the textiles section, in case you have not come across it before, because I hadn’t until a couple of years ago, nettles also contain a fibre that is very useful for making textiles

Liz: Yes! I have made nettle string before with the Young Archaeologists’ Club

Hazel: Awesome! The reason is they are a bast fibre, and that is when you have…it’s the same as flax and linen, so you have a tall stem, and then within the stem are these quite fine fibres that are, they run the length of the plant, and then you process it by basically the same process as making linen out of flax, which is where you have to ret them down, which means the outside of the stem rots off, and then you can extract the fibres, which can be spun and woven and processed into all sorts of textiles, including, we know it was used for string, and rope as well. That is fantastic, I think

Liz: That is very cool

Hazel: (laughs) And we know that nettles have been used for making textiles for a very very long time as well, and one of the reasons we know that is the Lusehøj textile, from Denmark. How do you pronounce the o with the line through it?

Liz: I am not the person to ask

Hazel: Ok. I am not sure. But it’s the Lusehøj textile, from Denmark, and this is a Bronze age textile, that was discovered in a Danish grave, and dating to around 2800 years ago, and it is a woven textile that is conclusively proven to have been made of nettles, and there are these fragments of it that survived, and that is the picture that I sent you, and I’ll put this up on the twitter as well

Liz: Awesome. I like how it is green

Hazel: I’m not sure if that’s just the patina of how it’s been in the soil, because it doesn’t come out green when you process the nettle

Liz: It is possible that they could have dyed it green though, which is just very pleasing to me

Hazel: Oh yeah, absolutely. And nettles can be used as a dye as well, so you could dye them

Liz: ‘Course they can! What can’t nettles do?

Hazel: Exactly! Exactly (laughs) You can get a green dye if it’s to do with food, or you can get a yellow dye, also, to dye fabrics. This is a plain weave, they call it a tabby weave, and it’s 16 threads per cm, which is actually a relatively fine weave

Liz: Yeah. Can you explain what a tabby weave is?

Hazel: Yeah. It’s a plain weave, so it’s just over one under one over one under one, going both ways

Liz: Ok, so it’s just the basic when you learn about weaving in school, it’s just under over under over

Hazel: Yep

Liz: Ok

Hazel: This changes the understanding of nettle as a textile, because it was thought to be the poor man’s cloth, people were using it when they couldn’t find anything else, and this was actually in a relatively high-status grave, and it wasn’t local, it wasn’t of local make. They did strontium isotopic analysis on it, and they postulated that it was made in the central European area, and then was traded, and ended up in Denmark

Liz: Ok, so it’s fancy imported nettle fabric

Hazel: It is fancy imported nettle fabric, so that puts it up there with linen and wool as a textile of choice, which, sorry to get a little bit nerdy there, but I think that is very cool

Liz: That is very cool!

Hazel: (laughs)

Liz: I’ve said it before, if people aren’t listening to this for nerdy little details like that, they’re listening to the wrong podcast

Hazel: Good point (laughs) Nettles have been used for textiles around the world. They are considered to be native to temperate zones of Europe, Asia, and North Africa, but they’ve pretty much spread all over the world. They are traditionally used to make textiles in Nepal, and they use the giant nettle, or the allo, which is a slightly different variety, but still the same family, and there’s some amazing textiles that are made out of that in Nepal. Actually one of my friends, who is a weaver, went to Nepal as part of a skill exchange project, and came back with these amazing knitted nettle lace shawls, that were incredibly delicate and beautiful

Liz: That’s so cool! Nettle lace

Hazel: Yeah. I’d love to try processing nettles to make yarn. I did try it once, and I don’t know what I did wrong, but I couldn’t…I got to the stage of being able to extract some of the fibre, but I think I wasn’t sure when I should stop retting then and when I should start extracting, so I dunno, it didn’t quite work. I’m gonna give it another go. However, I have spun with ramie. Ramie is another variety of the nettle family, which is often used for clothing in China, and it is still used in the commercial clothing industry, so if your clothing has a label that says it is partly ramie, that is nettle, and I think I’ve seen that a couple of times on stuff that I’ve bought, and I didn’t know what it was, and it’s nettles, it is a cellulose fibre just like linen

Liz: So people listening could be wearing nettle right now and not even realise

Hazel: You could. Check your labels. It was also used in Europe as clothing, and many other things. In France, I saw, I think it was a saddlebag, made out of nettle fabric, and that came from France in the 19th century, so it was still being used in certain places up ‘til then, and we know it was still being used in Scotland in the 18th century, because of Thomas Campbell, who writes, hold on. He writes “In Scotland, I have eaten nettles, I have slept in nettle sheets, and I have dined off a nettle tablecloth. The young and tender nettle is an excellent pot herb, the stalks of the old nettle are good as flax for making cloth. I have heard my mother say that she thought nettle cloth more durable than any other linen.” So there you go. And I would think so, because I think it has slightly…the variety of nettle in Europe, the common stinging nettle, has slightly coarser fibres, so I would think that it would make a very durable cloth. And then, in terms of folklore, there’s quite a few things, other than the folk remedies. Apparently in Celtic mythology thick strands of nettles, thick clumps of nettles, indicate that there are fairy houses close by, which is really cool, thinking about the tendency for nettles to grow where there’s been human habitation

Liz: It does remind me of a lot of the…you get Bronze Age mounds

Hazel: Mm-hmm

Liz: You then get later folklore about them being fey in some parts of Britain, especially the Celtic areas, and in Ireland, so I’m wondering if it’s a similar phenomenon

Hazel: Yeah, that’s so cool! I love the interweaving of history and folklore. Cool. That Nine Herbs Charm, that I mentioned early, that is one of the few mentions from Anglo-Saxon manuscripts of the god Woden, which is another form of the Norse god Odin, that was popular in Germanic culture at the time, and throughout this poem it mixes pagan and Christian images, which is, yeah, it’s just really interesting. The poem has Woden smiting an adder so hard that it flies apart into nine parts

Liz: Sure, classic god stuff

Hazel: (laughs) As you do. And then that transposes to the nine herbs, or it says here “for Woden took nine glory twigs, and smote the adder so that it flew apart into nine parts.” I don’t know what the glory twigs are, whether those are the herbs or not. I couldn’t find the explanation of that, but connected with the nettles there. And apparently in Norse folklore, as well, Loki had a magical fishing net made of nettles, which, I do think they were used for nets as well

Liz: That makes sense, if it creates a strong fibre

Hazel: Mmm. And then you get things like, I don’t know if you know the Hans Christian Anderson fairytale The Wild Swans

Liz: Oh yeah, is it nettle shirts?

Hazel: Yes! The long story short, this girl has seven brothers

Liz: It’s probably seven. It’s normally seven

Hazel: It’s either seven or nine. I think it is seven. Anyway, she has these seven brothers, and they get turned into swans by an evil curse, and she wants to turn them back, and in order to do that she has to, first of all, not speak a word while she does it, and she has to make each of them a coat made out of nettles, so she has to go and gather the nettles, and then process them, and spin them, and then either weave or knit them into these coats. So she does it, and she goes to gather the nettles, and they sting her hands, and her hands are in pain, but she continues, and she makes the coats, but the time runs out just as she’s not quite finished the last coat, so she has to throw the coats over the swans, and they turn back into humans, except for the youngest, whose coat isn’t quite finished, and he still has one wing instead of an arm

Liz: (laughs)

Hazel: So that’s another recognition of nettles being used as a fabric, that would be a usual thing, but, as well, the amount of work involved in creating that, and the creation through the pain theme

Liz: I mean she could have worn gloves, but you know. Not as dramatic, but she could have worn gloves

Hazel: But it’s not as dramatic

(both laugh)

Hazel: Also, she would have had to make the gloves first

Liz: She probably owned gloves

Hazel: (laughs) I’m pretty sure she’s a princess, actually, so

Liz: She is, yeah

Hazel: According to this version of the tale that I looked at today, as well, it’s a kindly fairy who instructs her, who tells her what she has to do to turn them back, so I don’t know why this fairy couldn’t also have given her gloves, but

Liz: (laughs) I’m sure the pain was an important part of it and all that, because it’s Hans Christian Anderson, but also

Hazel: Yeah, I’m pretty sure it’s some sort of moral, but I’m not about to do that

(both laugh)

Hazel: That’s a relatively quick journey through all of the many many many myriad things that nettles can be used for, and if you are a nettle hater, then I hope that we have managed to change your minds, and you will go and try and reap some of their benefits

Liz: That was very interesting

Hazel: I almost forgot, sorry, one more thing. Several countries have idioms relating to nettles

Liz: Ok

Hazel: (laughs) Various things, like in Germany they say “to sit in nettles” is to get into trouble, in English, of course, we have somebody being nettled

Liz: Mm-hmm

Hazel: Meaning they’re annoyed or irritated. My favourite one is a French idiom, which apparently translates as “don’t push granny into the nettles”

Liz: Yeah, don’t!

Hazel: (laughs)

Liz: What does that mean?

Hazel: Apparently it means “don’t take advantage in a situation”, like don’t make it worse. Just ‘cause you have the opportunity doesn’t mean you should

Liz: Ok, ok

(both laugh)

Liz: I might have to steal that one

Hazel: Me too, but I’ll try not to say it around my grandma. What is our local larder today?

Liz: I thought that I would talk about fugu, which you might be familiar with from that one episode of The Simpsons where Homer eats some and thinks he’s gonna die

Hazel: No? I don’t think I remember that

Liz: Fugu is several different genuses of pufferfish

Hazel: Ah, ok

Liz: Which is highly poisonous

Hazel: Yes

Liz: But is also a delicacy in Japan

Hazel: Mm-hmm

Liz: We’ve got evidence of it being eaten, actually, right back to the Jōmon Period

Hazel: Oh wow

Liz: Which is the Japanese Mesolithic, essentially. Fugu bones showing up in shell middens about 2000 years old

Hazel: Wow. That does make me wonder, who was the first person who discovered the way to make them edible?

Liz: That is a very good question. We actually have it being banned in the Edo Period, in the area that is called Edo and its surrounding areas

Hazel: Ok

Liz: I should say, Edo is the historical name for Tokyo

Hazel: Why did they ban it?

Liz: Because it’s not very safe to eat!

Hazel: (laughs) I guess that makes sense

Liz: It was actually banned again in the Meiji Period, which is an era that ended in 1912

Hazel: Ok

Liz: To become a fugu chef now, because there’s very strict laws about serving it, obviously

Hazel: Mm-hmm

Liz: By Japanese law, you have to have trained for at least 3 years to be allowed to serve fugu

Hazel: Wow

Liz: Which is normally served either as sashimi or in a hot pot, and you have to use separate knives for it, obviously, just in case of cross-contamination

Hazel: Uh-huh

Liz: Apparently they only introduced the fugu, I guess apprenticeship, you could call it, in 1958

Hazel: So before that you just had to get experience however?

Liz: I guess so, you’d just kind of…I feel like it was probably mostly a reputation thing, but I haven’t found much on that post-Meiji, pre-1958 how exactly that worked, but it seems logical that it would have been a you know this person can handle it

Hazel: Ok

Liz: Obviously it’s a very expensive fish, that encourages…interestingly, apparently you want to get as much meat out of it as you can, despite some parts being more toxic that others, including the liver being the most tasty, apparently, but also the most highly-concentrated toxin

Hazel: (faux-screams)

Liz: Serving the liver is actually illegal, and has been since 1984

Hazel: Right. Is this like the Sicillian cheese, in that, it’s not as gross as the cheese, but in that it might be banned, but that doesn’t stop people

Liz: I haven’t found anything about people selling fugu liver, which is probably for the best

Hazel: Mmm

Liz: But the amount of strict controls on fishing, sale, and preparation of it means it’s probably a lot harder to get away with than it would be doing stuff like the Sicillian cheese

Hazel: Ok, you can’t just sell it out of a car boot

Liz: No. You do have to pass a licensing exam after the apprenticeship, which has a 35% pass rate

Hazel: Wow

Liz: Which is probably good, if a slight mistake can kill someone

Hazel: Mm-hmm

Liz: ‘Cause the toxin in it is a neurotoxin

Hazel: (faux-screams)

Liz: Which has a fairly low lethal dose

Hazel: That sounds bad

Liz: Although there was a report on how many people had died from it, and it’s not as high as you would think it would be, just because of the strictness of it

Hazel: Ok

Liz: But it is a poison that doesn’t have an antidote. It’s get you to hospital and put you on life support and hope for the best

Hazel: Oh no

Liz: So I think it’s on the very short list of things I will not be trying, given the opportunity

Hazel: (laughs) Yeah, I’m not sure that’s worth it

Liz: So that is fugu, one of the most prized and deadly food items in the world

Hazel: Wow. I’d heard of pufferfish being a delicacy, but I didn’t realise how toxic it is

Liz: It’s ridiculous

Hazel: Wow

Liz: I genuinely don’t understand why people still eat it. I try not to judge, but this is one where I’m just like “are you sure it’s worth the risk?”

Hazel: I guess it’s a to say you’ve done it kind of thing

Liz: I suppose so. And there have been recent experiments at Nagasaki University where they have managed to raise pufferfish with a lower amount of tetrodotoxin, including being able to eat the liver, but I still don’t think I would risk it, personally

Hazel: A lower amount of neurotoxin is not reassuring. It’s still got neurotoxin in it

Liz: So thank you for listening, if you want to support us, keep the podcast going, help us buy craft supplies, things like that, you can go to patreon.com/breadandthread, and get access to a discord server, as well as monthly patreon recipes

Hazel: We also have a twitter, at BreadAndThread, where we post pictures of things that we talk about on the episodes, teasers for upcoming episodes, and we will retweet podcast-related things

Liz: You can also find us on tumblr at breadandthread, similar sort of thing, as well as occasionally posting things that I find interesting. And we do a WIP Wednesday on tumblr, Work In Progress Wednesdays

Hazel: We do, it is good. We also have a youtube channel, also breadandthread, which is just our episodes but in, still audio, but in youtube form, because some people prefer that

Liz: And if you have an episode suggestion, a question, anything like that, just wanna say hi, we’ve had a few people email us just to say they like the podcast, which is very nice

Hazel: Aww

Liz: Reviews are also cool, but emails are nice. You can email breadandthreadpodcast @ gmail.com, and I think that’s it, so thank you for listening, and we will see you next time