To Cure Herrings

Ingredients

• brine
• herrings
• coarse alum salt
• saltpetre
• butter
• white paper

Instructions

1. The best method for preserving herrings, and which may be followed with ease for a small family, is to take the brine left of your winter stock for beef to the fishing place.
2. When the seine is hauled, pick out the largest herrings and throw them alive into the brine.
3. Let them remain twenty-four hours, then take them out and lay them on sloping planks, so that the brine may drain off.
4. Have a tight barrel. Put some coarse alum salt at the bottom, then put in a layer of herrings, taking care not to bruise them.
5. Sprinkle over it alum salt and some saltpetre, then fish, salt, and saltpetre, till the barrel is full.
6. Keep a board over it.
7. Should they not make brine enough to cover them in a few weeks, you must add some, for they will be rusty if not kept under brine.
8. The proper time to salt them is when they are quite fat: the scales will adhere closely to a lean herring, but will be loose on a fat one; the former is not fit to be eaten.
9. Do not be sparing of salt when you put them up.
10. When they are to be used, take a few out of brine, soak them an hour or two, scale them nicely, and pull off the gills; the only entrail they have will come with them.
11. Wash them clean and hang them up to dry.
12. When they are to be broiled, take half a sheet of white paper, rub it over with butter, put the herring in, double the edges securely, and broil without burning it.
13. The brine the herrings drink before they die has a wonderful effect in preserving their juices: when one or two years old, they are equal to anchovies.