Recipes: Toheroa Soup | Toheroa Fritters

New Zealand is an island nation. Its inland and coastal waters support fish and shellfish in abundance. Unlike many other island nations, however, seafood has not been a major part of the diet of most New Zealanders in the twentieth century. Fish consumption has traditionally been low, as New Zealanders have relied on meat, and until quite recently, beef and sheepmeat, as sources of protein. The food historian Tony Simpson attributes the preference for meat over fish to the legacy of nineteenth-century British migrants. In contrast with the bland diet available to working-class Britons, New Zealand was a protein paradise. Many migrants eagerly seized upon a ready supply of beef and sheep; eating meat three times a day was the height of nineteenth-century migrant dietary aspirations. It is only in the last twenty years that this preference has begun to shift and seafood has been accepted as a regular food source.

Seafood has also long been a significant aspect of Maori diet. Maori fished for a range of inland and coastal fish: tuna (eel), kahawai, kokiri (leatherjacket), ara ara (trevally) and tarakihi. Shellfish too were harvested: pipi, tuatua and toheroa, kina, queen scallops and paua. Although Maori diet changed in the twentieth century, especially with the large-scale migration of many Maori into urban centres, seafood remains an important food source, as this image of men collecting paua from a Gisborne beach in 1964 suggests.

Maori and Pakeha both regarded some types of seafood as delicacies. This was particularly the case with the toheroa (Paphies ventricosum). This large, delicately flavoured shellfish is found in sandy beaches, mainly in the northern part of the country. Food writers have waxed lyrical about its taste. It is, according to the food writer Tony Astle, one of this country's 'wondrous shellfish'. The reputation of the 'aristocrat of New Zealand shellfish' rests as much on its scarcity as its flavour. New Zealand once boasted three toheroa canning factories, but since the 1970s stocks of the shellfish have become so low that their harvesting is strictly regulated. Toheroa seasons are very rare, the limit on the number taken is strictly enforced, and the methods of harvesting are restricted to manually digging in the sand, as in this 1962 image of toheroa gatherers on Muriwai Beach.

A popular form of cooking toheroa is making them into fritters.

Toheroa Fritters
Mince a tin of toheroas finely with just a slight touch of onion. Now prepare a cup of good white sauce in the usual manner, adding a pinch of nutmeg and a well beaten egg. Mix in toheroas and flavour with a little lemon juice. Roll spoonful lots in breadcrumbs, and fry in deep oil or fat. A lemon sauce is very nice served with these fritters.

(From Aunt Daisy's Favourite Cookery Book, 3^rd edn, Whitcombe and Tombs, Christchurch, 1954, p.22.)

Toheroa soup�'a dish fit for a king'�is an alternative to fritters; one apocryphal story notes that 'an American once tried to buy New Zealand just to have the exclusive rights to toheroa soup'.

Toheroa soup
The proper end for a toheroa which has led a good life is in a plate of soup and this is undoubtedly correct. People who fry oysters in flour and water paste are also liable to mince up toheroas to make them into fritters and each act is equally reprehensible....

1 dozen large toheroa 1 ounce butter
3 pints milk 1 egg
2 medium onions 1 cup fresh cream
1 ounce flour salt and pepper
1 teaspoon lemon juice

Method
(a) Mince finely the prepared toheroa. Follow with the onions through the mincer.
(b) Heat the butter, slowly add the flour, stirring well until a smooth white roux (paste) is developed.
(c) Slowly add the milk, continue stirring and bring to the boil.
(d) Add toheroa, onion mixture, salt and pepper to taste, and simmer for at least two hours.
(e) Strain through a fine sieve.
(f) Before serving, add the lemon juice and cream and pour into warmed bowls or plates.

(From Glen Pownall, New Zealand Shells and Shell Fish: Collecting: Eating, Seven Seas Publishing, Wellington, 1971, pp.63�6.)

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