PRINCIPLES INVOLVED IN THE PRESERVATION 

 OF FISH BY SALT 



By Harden F. Taylor 



Assistant for Developing Fisheries and for Saving and Use of 

 Fishery Products 



U. S. Bureau of Fisheries, Washington, D. C. 



The art of preserving fish by means of salt is of great 

 antiquity. It was practiced by the Phoenicians and Greeks, 

 and was brought to a high degree of perfection by the Romans. 

 Mixed with spices, salt was used in the time of Christ on the 

 shores of the Mediterranean and the outlying country, for 

 the preservation of food, reference being made in the Sermon 

 on the Mount to a salt which has lost its savor, meaning a 

 salt in which the spices have lost their aroma by evaporation. 

 In the centuries following, the art continued, both in the 

 Occident and the Orient, to play an important part in world 

 economy. Shakespeare puts in the mouth of his most won- 

 derful character, Falstaff, the words : "If I be not ashamed of 

 my soldiers I am a soused gurnet"* — a pickled gurnard, the 

 gurnard being held in such light esteem that it was a term 

 of contempt; whether "sousing" or pickling made the fish 

 doubly contemptible had better be left to the philologists to 

 determine. Less than twenty-five years after Shakespeare 

 wrote that play, the Plymouth Colony landed in America and 

 brought with, them the arts of sousing and pickling fish. The 

 descendants of the pilgrims are still pickling fish around Cape 

 Cod, and particularly at Gloucester. 



To a great many people it may seem that science has con- 

 tributed little or nothing to the improvement of methods of 

 preserving fish by salt, perhaps this view is shared by a con- 

 siderable number of people who are engaged in the business 

 of salting fish. To them it may appear that salting fish is 



*King Henry IV, Part I, Act IV, Scene II. 



