THE PRESERVATION OF FISH 187 



plus of fish. Generally speaking there are but two 

 methods of salting. According to the more common 

 procedure, the cleaned fish are packed in barrels in 

 layers between thin layers of salt. The salt ex- 

 tracts sufficient water from the fish to form a brine 

 or pickle, and the salt passes into the fish. If suf- 

 ficient salt has been added, the fish are dried out 

 enough to keep them for a year or more if stored in 

 a cool room. When no more pickle is formed, that 

 which formed during the salting operation is usually 

 removed, and fresh brine made from clean salt is 

 added. The other general method of salting fish is 

 by placing the fish in a large vat, covering them with 

 brine, and then placing a surplus of salt on the fish. 

 When thoroughly salted, or struck, the fish are 

 packed in barrels with either dry salt or fresh brine. 



More herring are salted than any other fish. In 

 Scotland alone about ^\e hundred thousand barrels 

 are preserved by salting. Large quantities of her- 

 ring are also salted in England, Ireland, Holland, 

 Germany, France, Denmark, Norway, the United 

 States, Canada, and Newfoundland. The Scotch, 

 Norwegian, and Dutch-cured herring are the best 

 known, and most of those salted in America are 

 packed according to one of these three processes. 



Scotch-cured herring possess a distinctive flavor 

 desired by certain connoisseurs of cured fish. The 

 fish are not washed after the removal of the gills and 

 the stomach; thus the salted fish contain all of the 

 blood. Since the fish are packed in the original pickle, 

 they retain a peculiar flavor caused by the preserved 

 blood. Because this flavor of salted herring has be- 



