110 U. S. BUREAU OF FISHERIES 
For the quarter-oil and half-oil packs the loss in weight should 
be 20 to 30 per cent. Artificial drying after steaming is necessary 
to bring about this loss. Drying before steaming can be dispensed 
with if the damage caused by steaming undried fish is not excessive. 
ADVANTAGES 
The steaming process has one big advantage over cooking in oil— 
the quality of the pack is not likely to be lowered by the presence 
within the can of any objectionable product, such as “old” frying 
oil. 
Steamed fish spread out on flakes cool more quickly than baskets 
of fried fish and therefore can be packed sooner. 
DISADVANTAGES 
Compared with frying in oil, steaming requires a little more labor, 
especially from having to place the fish carefully upon the flakes. 
The cooked fish are more troublesome to handle, and a given quantity 
of steamed fish requires more storage space than an equal quantity of 
fried fish. 
Skin breakage is greater than when the fish are fried, and more 
extractives and salt are removed from the fish. 
Although definite figures are not at hand, steaming undoubtedly 
is wasteful of fuel. 
RAW PACKING 
Packs of sardines in California and Maine at times have been 
prepared by packing from raw fish. Usually the fish have been given 
some sort of preliminary treatment in order to get them into con- 
dition for canning. Results, however, have been so unsatisfactory 
generally that no canner in California or Maine makes a practice of 
canning raw fish. The packs produced have stored and shipped 
poorly as a rule. The cans have turned out to be slack filled, with 
far too much water in them, and the fish themselves have been too 
soft. 
Although raw packs are not produced by the regular sardine 
canners, in British Columbia some large, fat pilchards are put up 
raw, without sauce or oil, in pound-tall cans. On the east coast of 
the United States alewives are canned in a like manner in No. 1 and 
No.2cans. These products are good foods. They find only a limited 
market, however, partly because they are judged by standards for 
canned sardines. When packed raw, they have the same disadvan- 
tages and therefore are subject to the same criticism as are the 
ordinary raw-packed sardines. 
It seemed obvious that good results could be obtained in packing 
sardines raw if enough water were removed from the fish before they 
were canned. Experiments were carried out with this idea in mind. 
followed by research aimed at bettering the method of preparing the 
fish for canning.** Most of the research reported upon in the next 
section of this document, under the heading ‘‘ Partial drying of the 
fish,’ was performed as a part of the research on this problem. A 
eeneral summary of the results of all these experiments follows: 

39 The results of this work, other than the special drying experiments, are summarized in Table 32, p. 182. 

