SC -gelatinous properties, was chessboards

[Nanna Rögnvaldardóttir]

This is what Alan Davidson says in North Atlantic Seafood, after describing
carrageen moss or Irish moss (Chondrus crispus):

"In fact there are two plants which go by the name carrageen. The other is
Gigartina stellata (Stackhouse) ... Both belong to a group of red seaweeds
which are the source of agar (or agar-agar, a Malayan word meaning the
gelatinous extract made from various of these plants). This product is
important in making liquids viscous or producing jellies ... During the
Second World War Britain suffered a shortage of agar and special measures
were taken to identify and exploit native stocks of carrageen ... The
housewives of the Hebrides still use carrageen for making a delicious milk
jelly which has a pleasant tang of the sea in its flavour. ... The Irish
have found many ways of using it in cookery, many of them subsidiary (for
example, as an addition to soups or to help set the fruit mixture in a fruit
flan)." Davidson also has an Irish recipe for a carragheen dessert.

Carrageen moss was eaten in Iceland in the old days, usually mixed with
grains in a porridge. Sometimes the porridge was cooled, cut into pieces,
and the pieces were then preserved in whey, sometimes for months. Carrageen
was also chopped and mixed with skyr (whey). Dulse, on the other hand, is
still eaten and has been since the settlement, and frequently chewed as a
sort of chewing gum (if you have read Egils Saga, you may recall when Egill
wanted to starve himself to death after losing his sons but was tricked into
accepting some dulse - that was OK, dulse for chewing wasn´t food - but its
saltiness made him thirsty and he called for a jug of water, but was given
milk instead. When he realized he had broken his fast, he abandoned his
starvation plan and composed a rather good poem instead.

Nanna

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