PRESERVATION OF FISHERY PRODUCTS FOR FOOD. 
527 
but owing to the moist atmospheric conditions about Eastport, even those factories 
that make use of this method whenever possible are obliged to supplement it by 
arti ficial means. The factories are, one after another, discarding entirely the sun-drying 
process, occasionally using a drying room, but more frequeutly adopting a patented 
drying apparatus similar to a baker’s rotary oven. Drying rooms are usually located 
on the top floor of the cannery, with movable racks for holding the flakes obliquely, 
each rack containing 40 or 50 flakes, placed about 3 inches apart and directly over 
each other. The room is supplied with a constant current of warm, dry air, brought 
from stoves or furnaces in the lower part of the building by means of large pipes, and 
which finally escapes through ventilators in the roof. 
The oven that has been quite generally adopted in the sardine canneries was 
introduced by Henry Sellman in 1880,* and is similar to an ordinary rotary oven of 
large size, and serves not only to dry but at the same time to cook the fish. It is 
about 1^ feet square and 18 feet high, and contains G or 8 skeleton iron frames 
attached to arms extending from a cylinder and which remain in a horizontal position 
while revolving in the oven, like the cars of a Ferris wheel. In these ovens the fish 
are subjected to a temperature of about 250° F. for 10 to 25 minutes, according to the 
size of the fish, but the time required for drying varies. In open air or in a drying- 
room it may take the greater i)art of a day; in a furnace-heated drying apparatus from 
2 to 7 hours, and in an oven only a few minutes, as before stated. The use of ovens 
is becoming more popular, and most of the canneries are now fitted with them. 
When fish are oven-dried they need no further cooking, but are at once cooled 
and packed in cans. In other cases they are placed in shallow wire baskets or other 
proi)cr receptacles and immersed in oil of suitable quality and heated to a temperature 
of about 220° F. This is for the purpose of frying and expelling from the fish all 
moisture remaining in them after the drying process. Oottou-seed oil is used mostly, 
and it is placed in a pan to the depth of about 2 inches and the fish immersed in 
it from 1 to 3 minutes. This oil can be used only a short time, since water and 
gluten from the fish pass into it and injure its flavor. For this reason the pan must 
be cleaned frequently and the oil renewed. The oil is boiled either by direct furnace 
heat or by the passing of steam through coils of pipe in the frying tank. The latter 
was introduced in 1884 and has many advantages over the old method of direct furnace 
heat. About half of the factories which fry their fish do so by means of steam, and, 
as is the case with other improved methods, the number is increasing. 
Mr. R. E. Earll states on page 178 of U. S. Fish Commission Bulletin for 1887: 
It is said tbat the fish which have been fried have a better flavor, and, having absorbed more oil, 
keep longer than those baked in an oven. It is claimed, however, by those using ovens, that by the 
baking process very nurch depends upon the skill of the baker, and that at its best it may produce 
results equal if not superior to those of the old system. It appears that the first fish fried in a given 
quantity of oil are better than the best baked fish, but that, as it is necessary, in order to keej) the 
expenses within reasonable limits, to use the same oil for Iry iug successively a great many pans of fish, 
the fluid soon becomes filled with scales and small x>!Uticles of fish, which burn on the bottom and 
imiiart to the ijroduct a bitter and uui:>leasaut taste. In baking, on the other hand, when it is jiroperly 
done, the fish are all of a quality equally good. 
Instead of the ordinary methods of cooking, some factories employ an endless 
belt, 200 feet long, which runs iu a wooden case 100 feet long. At one end of this case 
is a revolving fan which forces a blast of hot air over the fish that have been spread on 
* Letters Patent No. 223682, dated January 20, 1880. 
