Old recipe books have a deceptive frankness to them, with their terse introductions, blunt instructions and dependence on store-cupboard staples like onion, flour, butter and milk. Even so, the typical modern cook will soon run into trouble. Unless, of course, he or she knows how to tell apart – and take apart – cuts of meat, isn’t afraid of lard, congealed fat or jelly, and can cope with fish in all its forms.

It’s the loss of this latter set of skills, filleting in particular, that has coincided with the shrinking of our seafood horizons, recently published research suggests. Dr Ruth Thurstan, an Exeter academic, scrutinised 1,192 fish and shellfish recipes published in Good Housekeeping magazine over the last century. She found that in the 1920s, 32 species were listed in 76 recipes, but by the 2020s, only 23 species came up in 99 recipes, with the vast majority relying on ‘the big five’: salmon, tuna, prawns, cod and haddock.

Being stuck on the Big Five is partly a UK problem

Being stuck on the Big Five is partly a UK problem

Most fish was not filleted before the 1950s, so it fell to the housewife to de-bone it. There was a more gung-ho attitude towards seafood in general: cockles, whelks, oysters, sardines and mussels might all be on a typical cost-conscious weekly rotation. By the 1970s, convenience culture was well and truly underway, and pre-filleted fish had become the standard in packets and on........

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