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466 
METHODS OF PREPARATION OF FISH FOR THE MARKET. — ; 
Fish are classified for the market as “hard ” and “ soft,” the latter embracing | ql 
the miscellaneous coarse fish separately enumerated on p. 455. Some fish are 
dressed ; catfish, e. g.—which have been classified in the Report of the U. S. Fish 
Commission as the most important food-fish of Lake Ontario—being always — 
decapitated, cleaned and skinned before being shipped. Again other fish are — 
shipped “round” without any preliminary cleaning. Various methods have — 
been suggested for arresting and preventing the decomposition which fish more — 
than all other classes of food materials so rapidly undergoes. . 
These are reducible to two :—the use of antiseptic chemicals and the use of — 
a low temperature. The former method has been chiefly adopted in Norway for — 
preserving herring and consists in laying the fish in a mixture of two parts of — 
salt and one of boracie acid (for a barrel of herring, 5 Ibs. salt, 24 lbs. boracie — 
acid) and filling up with a weak solution of the acid. It 1s said to have the dis- 
advantage of communicating a slight taste to the fish which injures their — 
market value. With an abundant ice-supply at command the second method — 
is preferable, and is sufficient if the fish are not already in bad order before | 
being preserved (p. 465). In the States large refrigerators are employed in 
which fish may be frozen during any period of the year and preserved till 
demand arises for them. Sturgeon may thus remain a year in the refrigerator, 
being stacked there like cordwood. Trout are dressed before being frozen, but 
pickerel are frozen “ round.” é 
Whitefish are occasionally smoked in small quantities for local markets. 
This is effected in small huts seven feet square, the fish being first cleaned, 
then placed in brine for three to five hours, impaled in strings of five on 
sticks and hung up in the smoke of a hardwood fire, the door of the hut 
being first left open for half-an-hour and then closed for three or four hours. 
Substantially the same plan is used for kippering Herrings. After the fish 
are split they are placed for thirty-five minutes in pickle, spitted on fine rods 
carrying 12 to 20 herrings each and then smoked for five to six hours, the fuel 
used being the waste sawdust from birch. If a strong colour is required they 
are afterwards subjected to a shorter or longer exposure to the smoke of other 
wood—oak, e. g. 
A passing reference may be made to the ingenious conversion of Lake Erie 
herring by the use of a suitable stain into canned salmon, an industry which has 
its headquarters in Cleveland. One of the methods of preserving whitefish 
employed by the Indians of the North-West is not likely to be adopted generally ' 
but is worthy of being noted. The abundant fish caught in spring are dried, 
smoked, pounded to powder and mixed into a cake with oil from the liver. This 
with ordinary smoked fish furnishes an important element of food-supply. 
A large proportion of the Sturgeon caught on the north shore of Lake Erie 
are sent to Toledo and Sandusky, where they are further prepared for the market 
(partly by being converted into smoked Halibut), and where the roes are extracted 
for the preparation of caviare. Although the American demand for eaviare is 
not great, yet large quantities are shipped to Germany, and it commands good 
prices—as much as 10 cents a pound. Toledo alone packs 75,000 Ibs. in cases of 
130 to 150 lbs. each. The method of preparation is as follows: A large fish yields 
as much as three to five pails of roe, the eggs, which measure about one-ninth of 
an inch in diameter, varying in number from 800,000 ‘to 2,500,000. The masses 
of roe, preferably not yet ripe and therefore hard, are taken quite fresh and 
