CANNING SARDINES 107 
The cooking solution costs little and therefore can be changed 
frequently. Even when this is done the expense will be considerably 
less than for oil. 
Brining is eliminated, thus saving one step usually carried out in 
preparing fish by frying i in oil. 
The oil that cooks out of the fish is of good quality and can be 
recovered and sold. 
Most important, cooking in brine obviates the bad effects brought 
about when fish are cooked in “old” oil. 
DISADVANTAGES 
The process is not suitable for preparing small fish for the quarter- 
oil pack. 
It is frequently advantageous to brine fish quite heavily in order to 
keep them until it is convenient to cook them. This can not be done 
with fish that are to be brine cooked. 
Since fish float in strong brine, baskets with tops must be used to 
keep the fish submerged. Compared with cooking in oil, this means 
more trouble. 
The skins of brine-cooked fish tend to break and stick to each other 
and to the basket much more than is the case with fried fish. For 
this reason less fish per basket must be cooked. 
As with fried fish, considerable labor must be expended in handling 
the brine-cooked product. 
There is a material loss of valuable extractives and oil from the 
fish in brine cooking, as there is in cooking in oil. 
STEAMING 
Steam cooking has been practiced on a commercial scale in Cali- 
fornia on numerous occasions. Results usually have been unsatis- 
factory, however, and especially so during the World War period, 
when large quantities of steamed fish were put up in round cans. In 
general, in preparing fish by this method the skins have broken badly 
during steaming, especially where they touched the wire flakes, and 
after ‘being cooled the fish have tended to stick to the flake and to 
each other. The packs produced have been of poor quality and have 
not stood up well under ordinary storage and shipment. The cans 
usually turned out to be slack-filled and to contain considerable 
aes and the fish themselves were soft, with tender, easily broken 
skins. 
Soon after the war a canner in Santa Cruz had considerable success 
in selling a product prepared by packing the fish in oval cans, invert- 
ing them on wire flakes, and cooking the fish with steam. For some 
reason, apparently other than the quality of the pack prepared, 
this company soon discontinued operations. Later, a canner in 
Monterey began to steam cook fish and still continues to do so with 
much success. The process used is essentially the same as the one 
recommended here as having proved best by experiment. The 
development of the process by this canner and my experiments were 
independent of each other. At present no other canner makes a 
practice of canning steamed fish in California. 
Experiments were carried out to learn not only how to prepare a 
good pack of steamed fish having satisfactory shipping and keeping 
