The scene most readers remember from Graham Swift’s 1983 breakthrough novel, Waterland, is the one where the doomed 13-year-old Freddie Parr inserts an eel suggestively into Mary Metcalf’s school-regulation knickers. That was a flashback to 1940 when the water-logged Fenland setting was still teeming with Anguilla anguilla, the European eel.

Incest, madness and regret also populate this rather bleak fiction. I’m guessing that all three are less abundant these days. The same definitely goes for those wriggling denizens of the East Anglian shallows and the locals who make a living out of them.

Step forward Smith’s Smokery of Boston, stalwart purveyors of hot smoked eel these past 30 years. Smoking is the way I like my freshwater eel prepared and that’s what Terry Smith and son Chris do over beech chippings. They net some mature silver eels from the East Coast tributaries and drains that trickle into the Wash and the Humber. The rest are imported from the Netherlands, continuing a perennial trade.

You don’t have to have Viking blood in your veins to twig the affinity with herring and eel-centric culinary traditions across the North Sea and into the Baltic. Even today’s groundbreaking Nordic cuisine pays its homage; Noma serves smoked eel in a soup dish with cider vinegar gelée, apple cubes and dill, while Manchester’s own Nordic-influenced Michelin one star, Mana, has impressed with a Yakitori eel glazed with yeast and deep, red blackcurrant vinegar.

It was a remarkable dish I ate recently in Copenhagen that led me to resume my own UK eel trail. A favourite of Noma’s Rene Redzepi, Schønnemann has been the city’s smörrebröd central since 1877. A lunch there provided me with stout-glazed smoked eel on a bed of scrambled eggs with chives on toasted rye bread. Simply perfect. 

Back home, where better to start than by purchasing 600g of freshly smoked eel fillets from Smith’s after reading Terry’s back story on their website (from which I have also lifted some atmospheric pictures)?

“Our family has always been catching something. Our great great grandad and grandad were fishermen catching shrimps, cockles, fish and eels in the summer and flight netting for ducks and geese in the winter on the Friskney mudflats in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

“But it was eels I started trapping in 1975, after catching them on rod and line during my youth. Eels are always sold live, and at that time Billingsgate market in London was the place to go. I first went to the old market near Tower Bridge which has now gone and is covered in skyscrapers and then later to the new Billingsgate Market at Canary Wharf.

“It was about 1990 that I delivered the first load of eels to Holland by small lorry. Whilst delivering to the Dutch smokehouses we were able to see first hand the techniques on how they smoked them. During this time my son Chris joined me and in 2001 we decided to use the knowledge that we had gained from the Dutch to start Smith’s Smokery. Although many of our eels still go to Holland alive we are smoking more and more as demand and awareness increase.”

We have to ask – is eel a sustainable fish?

There is an exhaustive, yet still fascinating, overview, to which Terry Smith contributed. Despite UK eel stocks having declined by 95 per cent in the last half century these experts remain cautious optimistic about the eel’s future both as a species and on our plate. That’s despite EU rules restricting wild eel fishing to preserve stocks.

A history of eels on our plate

It is hard to see jellied eels wriggle back into fashion. This traditional English dish is  associated with East London, where it was a staple food in the 18th and 19th centuries. These pie and mash shop staples are prepared by boiling chopped eels in a spiced stock, which then cools and solidifies into a jelly. The dish is often served cold, with vinegar and white pepper as common accompaniments. 

Not for want of trying but I’ve never got the taste for it. Whereas smoked eel remains on my culinary bucket list. It’s an excuse to pop into Soho’s Quo Vadis to sample Jeremy Lee’s signature starter – a smoked eel sandwich in fried sourdough bread with horseradish and mustard creams topped with red onion pickle.

Jeremy has stuck with his original suppliers Mr Beale’s Eels of Lincolnshire (nothing to do with Ian Beale’s Eel Shop in Eastenders!) through their metamorphosis into the Dutch Eel Co,  Devon Eel Company and, finally, Meadowland Smokery. 

My own long-time online supplier, Brown and Forrest have ditched eels (even though their email address remains info@smokedeel.co.uk). 

To sate subsequent cravings I have enjoyed smoked eel from the likes of Upton Smokery near Burford, Pinneys of Orford and the Port of Lancaster Smokehouse. Sign of the times – the latter import fresh eel from Australia and New Zealand.

How smoked eel is prepared

Hot smoking is the route, preferably with beech wood, which is subtler than oak. Uncooked, the flesh is strongly metallic. Mature silver eels  offer a firmer less fatty flesh than juveniles. Brown and Forrest method was to gut and briefly roast them before have up to three hours’ smoking over sawdust.

What to do with it at home

It’s a mite disconcerting when a whole eel drops through the letterbox, albeit vacuum packed. Yet its straightforward to fillet it from its one bone and spoon off the flesh from the skin. The leftovers make a smoky broth.

The whole eel has a four-week shelf life, it can be hung in the larder or wrapped in parchment and stored in the fridge.In fillet form it can be frozen.

Destination Sargasso Sea – an epic trek

Consult Chapter 26 of Waterland for a romantic exploration of the myths surrounding the eel and its journey back to the Caribbean, via the Azores, to breed for a single time… and die. No  space here for a run down on the enduring mystery surrounding the creature. Modern tagging has confirmed the Sargasso Sea, a 2 million square mile, seaweed-strewn patch of ocean south west of Bermuda, is definitely the breeding ground for the eels. Once spawned, the larvae drift back to European waters via ocean currents. It might take two years before they turn up as fragile, transparent glass eels in familiar places like our own Fens. These adapt to fresh or brackish water, developing into elvers and eventually sexually mature yellow eels around 1m long, before they are ready to make the return journey.

• Eel plays an important role in Japanese cuisine, but that’s a story for another day. Sayonara.