54 H OW TO CURE WHITING. 



large, they will be sufficiently salted, when they may be placed 

 on a grating, or hung in the air to dry. 



' When perfectly free from all moisture say in four or five 

 days' time they may be lashed up in bundles of a couple of 

 dozen each. While drying, place them under cover at night or 

 the dews will considerably retard the progress of the work. 



' The process above described is not as tedious as it reads ; 

 two or three hands can, after a little practice, clean, split, and 

 salt many dozens in an hour. 



* If, when very lightly broiled and well peppered, a piece of 

 butter is rubbed over them, and they are dished hot for break- 

 fast, they will prove as delicious, delicate, and appetising as 

 when, with their tails through their eyes, they are served in 

 their pretty pale brown crumb-and-egg jackets.' 



The method of curing Buckhorn (which is West of England 

 vernacular for dried Whiting) is almost identical with the fore- 

 going directions, the chief difference consisting in merely open- 

 ing the fish through the back and top of the head, instead of 

 through the throat and belly. By this method the fish fold up 

 like a book and have possibly a more sightly appearance to 

 connoisseurs of Buckhorn ; but the fish are equally as palatable 

 if the above method be followed, which I have, in my own case, 

 found to afford greater despatch. 



Whiting-Pollack I also find very good salted and dried, 

 and the larger Whiting- Pout from ten inches and upwards in 

 length, although they are not equal to the real Whiting, which 

 is scarcely surpassed in delicacy by any sea-fish. 



A clean beach of pebbly shingle is an excellent place to dry 

 fish, for the heat rising from beneath and given off from the 

 stones, will, on a fine warm day, dry the fish (by turning them 

 occasionally) in a very few hours. 



A fish-stick is often seen at a cottage door in the West of 

 England, and consists generally of a young holly bush deprived 

 of its bark, and the branches left about a foot in length at 

 bottom, diminishing to six inches at the top, the fish being 

 thrust on through a hole in the tail part ; they drain well and 

 soon become firm when thus suspended. 



If fish are found to have become unpleasantly salt, they 



