Percebes
An edible history
This week I am thrilled to present Edible History’s first guest post. “Percebes” is an anthropological history written by Bianca Chu, who is a writer, anthropologist of art, curator, and artist based between London and Lisbon. You can find out more about her work here. She is also the friend with whom I once enjoyed a single slice of pineapple.
Percebes translated in English is “goose barnacle.” In scientific nomenclature, they are known as Pollicipes pollicipes. Historically, percebes have been a subject of fascination for naturalists. Their existence has been known as early as the 12th century. In the 16th century, English Botanist John Gerard included an extensive study in his book Herball or Generale Historie of Plants published in 1597. His research led him to believe that they were in fact the birthplace of a certain species of geese.
The “goose barnacle” and “barnacle goose” have a strange and intertwined history in Europe, which over time transformed into a mythological narrative within general ecology. Later, Charles Darwin produced a formal study of the barnacle between 1846-1854 and illustrations of percebes were published in his 1851 book entitled, A Monograph of the Sub-class Cirripedia, with Figures of all the Species. The Lepadidae; or Pedunculated Cirripedes.
Individual percebes are usually no more than a few inches in size and have two aspects of their body; a head-like feature with a harder exterior and a thinner, tubular body from which the head extends. Their form reminds of a dinosaur claw, they feel pre-historic, and fossil-like. One can imagine their experience of time as stretching well over human time; the temporal range of the Anthropocene as experienced by humans has little impact on these creatures. For centuries, the goose barnacle has been known to our species, our creation of evolutionary stories and our attempts to make sense of these curious creatures’ origins, relations and use-value betrays our own fascination.
Percebes are discreet objects that grow on rocks, near tides where the motion of the sea provides nutrients and protection. Left alone, they exist quietly in some of the most dangerous and hard to reach locations: at the bottom of tall cliffs or inside caves. They are glued to their position on the rock, and live symbiotically with the movement of the ocean. They are also found on the hulls of ships and other manmade inventions with similar conditions to those found in nature. As a food commodity, they are harvested for consumption, such as in parts of Spain where they are considered a delicacy. One interlocutor suggested this was contributing to their dwindling population as a species. In Portugal, I observed that it is mostly down to a small group of individuals in various localized areas who have the practice and knowledge required for fishing them.
In Portugal, there seems to be a number of ritualised practices that revolve around percebes, which are related to gathering them and eating them. One interlocutor shared with me the website of Portuguese photographer João Mariano who has produced a book entitled, Guerreiros do Mar or Warriors of The Sea. His black and white images of the percebes-fishers depict moments of action. They focus on the people involved in catching percebes but also on the landscape in which this crustacean is found. The descriptive and heroic title of the book seems an apt description for percebes themselves, despite their small scale. However, there is no pomp or circumstance to their existence. Inhabiting extreme conditions, they battle the ever-changing and at times, hostile tides of the ocean.
In order to catch percebes, people must have a specialized knowledge of their whereabouts and a determination to source them. Their only protection from fishing remains the natural power and precarity of the ocean. However, their status as a delicacy provides financial motivation, as a food commodity. Looking at Mariano’s images, a strong sense of authenticity and awareness of the landscape on the part of the humans are also necessary prerequisites. The method involves scaling rock faces and literally cutting them from the rock beds and then making one’s way back up the cliff, so there is still an apparent traditional method which requires a certain physicality. It involves being aware of the moon and its related effect on the tides. One collaborator explained to me that the tides are turbulent during new and full moon so a fisherman will wait for the lowest tide possible before attempting to descend. Regardless, the sea is untameable, even if one is aware of the moon cycle, the waves and currents are still a real risk. Percebes force humans to go to them, to endeavour to find them, in perilous places.
Once they are fished, they are sent to local restaurants on the coast, or sold via markets. On a surf trip in Aljezur last September, I went with an interlocutor “E” to meet one of his contacts in a local town. He told me I was going to meet a local “gangster” in the area who knew all the best spots for finding the “ripest” percebes. He even went to hunt for them, which earned him respect in the eyes of “E”. We bought four kilos of percebes that day for a group of eight of us. It cost sixty euros. They were handed to us in reused, plastic bags straight from the source. The best percebes are when the red of the barnacle is as vivid as possible, and if they have been allowed to grow to a certain size, the largest ones are the juiciest with the most meat. Sometimes a fisherman will get a haul which is not ripe and the Portuguese say that they are “filled with piss.” The haul we got, I was told, “could not have been fresher.”
It is at this stage that percebes ceases to be crustacean living on a rock. Once it is plucked from its habitat, it enters various cycles of consumption, becoming a food commodity, enjoyed by local Portuguese and foreigners alike. Unlike some delicacies in the food industry, there is no special preparation or technique for cooking them. They can even be eaten raw. All the Portuguese people I have met have told me that the ideal method is simply to boil sea water in a pot, sinking a batch of percebes for no more than a few minutes. In that sense, they are a total meal without the need for a process of preparation. One interlocutor told me that when he tried percebes “done fancy” at expensive restaurants, it did not taste as good. Percebes insist you to enjoy them just as they are, full of nutrients and with a salty, but addictive flavour. Due to their bite size scale, they seduce you into a long process of consumption.
The experiential aspects of their lives are the act of fishing for them and the act of eating them. These are ritualized moments. In one sense, the difficulty of catching them, makes the meal and experience of eating them even more potent. I have experienced eating them in a restaurant in addition to the very special, intimate experience I had (a family-style meal with friends where we home-cooked them). When I ate them at a restaurant, they were served with chips and beer.
There was a casualness in eating them at a local seafood restaurant, which is an attitude that I have observed generally about Portuguese demeanour. The beer tasted delicious with the saltiness of the percebes. We had two kilos between two of us, which was a big order. Before we went to the restaurant, my collaborator had to call the restaurant to check if there were any percebes on that day because they aren’t always readily available. Restaurant owners also have to cultivate long-standing relationships with local fisherman in order to get the best haul. In this setting, they are like any delicacy served in a restaurant setting. You pay more than you would if you knew a “local” who could get them for you directly from a source.
When I ate it in the privacy of a home, with “E” and a group of Portuguese friends, the experience was completely different. Our dinner lasted several hours, we talked, laughed, feasted. We enjoyed in cracking the heads with our teeth and the throwing the empty shells back into the communal bowl. I observed the pleasure that everyone took from eating these tiny things. With over four kilos to finish between eight of us, it seemed like too much, but then one of my interlocutors said “Don’t worry, I could eat the rest for breakfast.” Throughout the eating of percebes, people stopped to say how delicious they were, how fresh they were, they seem to appreciate the moment in a way that only a truly meaningful sensory experience could elicit.
It was during this meal that I was taught a method of eating percebes. “E” told me some people eat the entire head of the barnacle, but he showed me show to slightly crack the head between my teeth and suck out the meat from the inside, throwing away the harder outer shell. Another collaborator told me he preferred to rip the head off gently, as he didn’t like the taste of the outer shell. After which, you turn to the tubular body, squeezing it between your index and thumb and again cracking it with your teeth to expose the smaller piece of meat inside. In some ways, there is a violence to this act of eating, its outer casing being the last barrier between material existence and their annihilation via digestion.
Percebes are ritual-inducing objects. Looking at Mariano’s images of his “warriors,” there is a soulfulness palpable, an authenticity required to be a fisherman and to have the skill and guts to gather them. And this soulfulness, this dedication to gathering them transmits through their simple preparation method to the very act of eating them. Sitting around a table with friends, beers and simple sides, means that the main focus of the meal is the percebes. They are the material glue that gathers people around the table and the subject of conversation. They beget appreciation and awareness of the ocean and the landscape. They create communities of skilled workers, farmers, and aficionados.
In considering their demise through digestion, I also considered what the end of their social life might entail. The empty bodies of the percebes collected in bowls at the end of the meal are thrown away, but what remains is a trace of the people and things that are entangled with percebes: the pounding waves, the solitary rocks, the fisherman and “gangsters,” their chisels, the scientific facts and narrative myths, the restaurant-goers, the surfers, Mariano’s photographic lens—all the actors and actants who have been enmeshed in the web of “associations” of these small barnacles. Their social lives perform as networks, connecting these various actors and their respective networks together. Whether it is food supply chains, or intimate exchanges between groups of people, percebes speak to a Portuguese experience and sensibility: discreet, authentic, soulful and existing in their own rhythm.
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I only ever knew “Goose Barnacle” to be the name of a clothing store in Brooklyn. Very interesting!