No. 2 (1921) REMARKS ON CANNING I?5 



too small for canning. The Japanese crabs of which the canned 

 meats so largely find their way into the U.S.A. market, are of huge 

 size. 



197. Smoked fish. — These are not infrequently canned especially 

 when light or mild-cured so that they will not. unless canned, keep 

 good for export or for sale beyond a few days. Kippered herrings 

 are commonly canned in the United Kingdom ; in the U.S.A- 

 smoked salmon is perhaps more usual. 



In India smoked mackerel either merely gutted (and split) like 

 bloaters, or else split like kippers, take the place of herring, but 

 beyond a few experiments to ascertain possibilities, these have 

 not been canned at Beypore, since the fish are generally too thin in 

 flesh to render the can an attractive proposition. 



Slices of large fish (seer, black pomfret, polynemus, etc.) are 

 more possible ; in this case the fish should generally be light-cured, 

 sliced, and the slices rapidly smoked in a dense smoke and canned 

 at once, with or without oil. But variations are possible ; the fish 

 may be more heavily salted and smoked and may then be cured 

 whole (split) and sliced for canning. Only one experiment has 

 been tried in canning large smoked fish, in slices, at Beypore. 

 Hence a description of canned American smoked salmon may be 

 useful and suggestive. 



198. The salmon are cured in both ways, hard and mild. Hard- 

 cured are treated as follows : the fish are gutted, split, cleaned and 

 packed for several days in casks with about I lb. salt to 6 lb. of 

 fish. They are then repacked in market barrels with a larger 

 quantity of salt, apparently about I of salt to 3 of fish. When 

 required for smoking, these fish are soaked till most of the salt has 

 been removed, and then hard-smoked for about two days till they 

 are well dried and thoroughly smoked. A subsequent special light 

 smoking with a particular class of aromatic wood is also given. 

 These fish are exported in ordinary wooden boxes, but when used 

 for canning they are cut into thin slices, and packed in sealed 

 cans with cotton seed oil, either in the ordinary small cans or in 

 large ones, holding several pounds, intended probably for use by 

 retail dealers who would sell the product in small quantities, a 

 plan adopted at Beypore in the matter of sardines in oil. 



Mild-cured salmon are treated as follows : the fish are cleaned, 

 split, deeply scored and washed, artificially cooled and placed in 

 saturated brine in casks where they are kept for two or three weeks, 



