CANNING SARDINES 111 
EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS 
The experiments clearly show that good packs of pound-oval 
sardines in tomato sauce can be prepared by packing the fish raw if 
sufficient water be first removed by brining and drying. Satisfac- 
tory results were not obtained by packing untreated fish or fish that 
have been brined only. 
Brining, aside from salting the fish, helps prepare them for canning 
by removing some water. It is advisable to brine the fish as 
long and in as strong a solution as possible in order to take full 
advantage of this dehydrating effect. Two to three hours in satu- 
rated brine is about as long as large “ovals” can be brined without 
taking up too much salt. 
Satisfactory results were obtained in preparing large fish for the 
pound-oval pack by drying two hours in air having a temperature 
of 95° to 105° and a velocity of about 500 feet per minute. These 
fish, of course, had been brined heavily. After drying they were 
packed firmly into cans and lightly salted thick sauce added. Two 
hours’ drying under these conditions did no more than remove the 
minimum of water, and at times it failed to do this. 
During the 1921-22 sardine season good packs of pound-oval 
sardines were prepared consistently by the raw-packing process. 
These packs when properly prepared were better than packs produced 
by the other processes. The flavor of the fish was excellent, little 
besides water having been removed from them. The appearance 
was very good, the fish being always bright in color and the skins 
intact. The physical condition of the fish generally was not quite 
as good as were similar packs of fried fish, for the reason that more 
water had been removed by the frying process. Preliminary tests, 
however, showed that the product obtained was virtually as good in 
storing and shipping qualities as were fried-in-oil packs. 
It is a real disadvantage, however, to have to dry fish two hours 
or longer. Large and relatively expensive equipment is needed in 
order to do this. Raw packing would be much more feasible if the dry- 
ing could be done in less time. It was not possible to tell how well 
the drying was being done or to know what could be expected, since 
no information upon the behavior of the raw fish under various 
drying conditions was available. Experiments, therefore, were car- 
ried out to furnish this information and to learn, if possible, how to 
shorten the drying period. Much valuable information was obtained 
from these experiments. Complete data are given and the results 
discussed in another section. Here it is sufficient to summarize 
only those results that apply to this problem. 
The experiments indicate clearly that little can be done to hasten 
drying in preparing the fish to be packed raw. Increasing the 
temperature of the drying air will do this, but the fish soften badly 
and oil is rendered from them. This change is undesirable; it gives 
a soft fish, and during drying the fish break when they drop from 
one run to the next in the continuous driers. 
On several occasions raw packs were prepared from fish that had 
stood in the air about 21 hours. Some of these fish had been brined 
and dried; others had been brined only and had to be dried before 
being packed. The fish kept well and packed satisfactorily. Un- 
doubtedly it would be better not to dry the fish until just before 
