country house cooking of this period. Lady Llanover, in her book 'First Principles of Good Cookery', gives detailed instructions for crimping fresh-caught salmon in order to 'set' the flesh before the curd (which is the white substance between the flakes of orange flesh) melts and makes the fish oily. Fennel, which grows wild in Ceredigion, was often used in sauces for fish, especially salmon and mackerel. Gerald of Wales commented on the spectacular sight of salmon leaping at the waterfalls at Cenarth while Bobby Freeman recalls that when she ran a hotel in Pembrokeshire in the 1960s, salmon from the river Teifi would be dropped off by bus outside the hotel, with the bus conductor carrying them in boxes to the kitchen. The fish had been packed in cool, fresh bracken with six or seven big fish to a box. Salmon is in season in Wales from February to October, but the main runs of fish tend to be from June to September. When in the river salmon use their energy to produce roe ready for spawning and so the flesh begins to deteriorate quickly. For this reason Pressdee notes that gravid fish, which tend to be darker and thinner, should be avoided and left in the river to spawn. He also notes that wild salmon are considered to have a more solid and defined texture and a flavour than farmed salmon and comments that this reflects their diet of shellfish, while farmed salmon, although more readily available, tends to have less muscular flesh and a more buttery taste. Trout are also plentiful in the rivers of Ceredigion and are farmed commercially at Rhydlewis Trout Farm where the trout are raised in pools fed by the rivers Teifi and Ceri and smoked in wooden chambers. Lamb The flavour of lamb from Welsh Mountain Sheep is influenced by geography. Ceredigion's coastal cliffs are subject to westerly winds which cover the cliffs in salt spray. The spray is caught by goose grass on which the lambs graze and this influences the flavour of the meat. Along estuaries and salt marshes, such as the Dyfi Estuary Mudflats, wild spearmint, samphire and sea beet give the meat a rich flavour, with saline nuances while lamb from upland areas, like Cader Idris, feed off mauve flowering heather (calluna) in summer which gives the meat a more aromatic flavour. The flavour of Welsh lamb is also