CANNING SARDINES 109 
also has a pronounced drying effect, removing water from the fish in 
the same way that hot air does. 
In one series of experiments the oil and extractives that drained 
from the fish during steaming were caught, dried, and weighed. If 
the assumption is made that the fish were 40 per cent fat and dry 
solids (a high figure), then from 3 to 8.3 per cent of the fat and dry 
solids were removed during steaming in these tests. 
PROCEDURE RECOMMENDED 
Large pilchards for the pound-oval pack should be brined heavily 
(one and one-half to three hours) in a saturated salt solution. Brin- 
ing can be eliminated if extra salt is added to the tomato sauce. 
Fish to be packed in oil, however, must be brined. The skins of the 
fish should be toughened by drying in the same way as for frying in 
oil (pp. 125 to 129). 
The dried fish should be spread on wire flakes for steaming. To 
prevent sticking, they should not touch each other. If the flakes are 
not oily from being used, a little oil spread upon them will help to 
prevent excessive sticking. The fish should be steamed for 15 to 30 
minutes under conditions that will assure moisture being removed 
from them. Cooking in a retort under about 5-pound pressure, with 
good escape of steam from the petcock, is satisfactory. In asteam 
chest, where steam can escape and the cooking therefore is done at 
atmospheric pressure, the steam should be turned into the chest at 
boiler pressure, and it should be allowed to escape quite freely from 
the cooker. Reduction of the steam pressure from that of the 
boiler to that of the atmosphere superheats the steam, and this helps 
to remove water from the fish. <A little experimenting will show 
what steaming conditions give best results. 
The fish also may be steamed in the can. Dried fish should be 
used for this purpose, and the can should be slightly overfilled, as 
the fish shrink during steaming. The cans should be inverted on 
wire flakes during steaming, so that liquids will drain from the cans. 
After cooking, hot sauce should be added to the cans, and they 
should be sealed while hot. This sealing while hot eliminates regular 
exhausting. 
Fish steamed on flakes should stand until cold, or they should 
be cooled by blowing cool air over them. They are then ready for 
packing. 
Fish steamed before packing also should be packed quite tightly 
into the cans, as they may shrink somewhat when sterilized. Thick 
sauce should be used, and this will take up any water that cooks 
out of the fish in the retort. 
It is important that the procedure used remove sufficient water 
from the fish. The experiments on steaming do not tell how much 
water should be removed, but later experiments do.** For the 
pound-oval pack in tomato sauce there should be a loss in weight of 
10 to 15 per cent. Most of this loss, of course, is water. If drying, 
steaming, and cooking in air do not dry the fish enough they should 
stand in air until dry enough or be dried artificially. Steaming, 
however, can be carried out so as to remove enough water. 

% Experiments with the new process reported upon in the last section of this document. 
