Preserving
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Scale, clean, and wipe the fish.
Brine and soak
Make a brine with water, salt, sugar, and saltpetre.
Put the fish into the brine and let them soak for 18 hours.
Pack and store
Drain the fish well and place in layers in an earthenware vessel or barrel, covering each layer with salt.
Cover the vessel tightly to exclude air.
Store in a cool, dry place.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Explore the science
What each ingredient does
- Coarse sea salt
- Draws moisture out of the fish and preserves it by making the flesh inhospitable to spoilage microbes.
- Brown sugar
- Adds sweetness and a mild flavour that balances the sharpness of the salt.
- Saltpetre
- Helps preserve the colour of the fish and adds a cured, savoury character during storage.
The step that matters
Packing the layers with salt. Each layer needs enough coarse salt to cover it fully, because salt pulls water out of the flesh and slows spoilage. Gaps left unsalted can let bacteria grow, and excluding air during storage further limits spoilage.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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