kipper

Kippered "split" herring.

A kipper is a whole herring, a small, oily fish,^[1] that has been split from tail to head, gutted, salted or pickled, and cold smoked.

In the United Kingdom and North America they are often eaten grilled for breakfast. In the UK, kippers, along with other preserved fish such as the bloater and buckling, were also once commonly enjoyed as a high tea or supper treat; most popularly with inland and urban working-class populations before World War II.

Terminology

The English philologist and ethnographer Walter William Skeat derives the word from the Old English kippian, to spawn. The origin of the word has various parallels, such as Icelandic kippa which means "to pull, snatch" and the German word kippen which means "to tilt, to incline". Similarly, the English kipe denotes a basket used to catch fish. Another theory traces the word kipper to the kip, or small beak, that male salmon develop during the breeding season.

As a verb, "to kipper" (see kippering), means to preserve by rubbing with salt or other spices before drying in the open air or in smoke. So beef or other meat preserved in the same fashion can reasonably be called "kippered."

Origin

The exact origin of kippers is unknown, though fish have been slit, gutted and smoked since time immemorial. According to Mark Kurlansky, "Smoked foods almost always carry with them legends about their having been created by accident — usually the peasant hung the food too close to the fire, and then, imagine his surprise the next morning when...".^[2] An English version of this legend can be found in the story of John Woodger at Seahouses in Northumberland, around 1843, in which kippering happened accidentally, when fish for processing was left overnight in a room with a smoking stove. The legend is known to be false, because the word "kipper" long predates this. It is known that smoking and salting of fish—in particular of spawning salmon and herring which are caught in large numbers in a short time and can be made suitable for edible storage by this practice—predates 19th century Britain and indeed written history, probably going back as long as humans have been using salt to preserve food. Thomas Nashe writes in 1599 about a fisherman from Lothingland in the Great Yarmouth area similarly discovering about smoking herring by accident.^[3]

It is also known that kippered fish were eaten in Germany and reached Scandinavia sometime during the Middle Ages.

Preparations

Canned kippered herring exported from Germany.

"Cold smoked" fish, that have not been salted for preservation, need to be cooked before being eaten safely (they can be boiled, fried, grilled, jugged or roasted, for instance). "Kipper snacks," (see below) are precooked and may be eaten without further preparation.

Kippers for breakfast in England.

In the United Kingdom, kippers are served for breakfast, tea or dinner. In the United States, where kippers are less commonly eaten than in the UK, they are almost always sold as either canned "kipper snacks" or in jars found in the refrigerated foods section.

In Haiti, kipper is eaten with scrambled eggs for breakfast or mixed with pasta or rice.

British variations

Kippers are extremely popular in the Isle of Man. Thousands are produced annually in the town of Peel, where two kipper houses, Moore's Kipper Yard and Devereau and Son, smoke and export herring. A kipper meal is known as spuds and herrin in the Isle of Man, where kippers are usually served with potatoes and buttered bread.

The meal is called tatties and herrin in the Scottish Lowlands. Mallaig, the once busiest herring port in Europe, is famous for its traditionally smoked kippers.

In England, the small village of Craster in Northumberland is world famous for its herring kippers which are still made in traditional smokehouses. However, the fish themselves now come from the Atlantic, instead of local waters. The town of Hastings in East Sussex is certified by the Marine Stewardship Council as producing sustainably-fished herring. During the October-January season the herrings are smoked with oak chips at Rock-a-Nore Fisheries in Rock-a-Nore, opposite the fish market on the Stade (the beach), to produce MSC-certified kippers. These are sold locally and supplied to nearby Judges Bakery, where they are used in place of pork in a variation on traditional sausage rolls, the Rock-a-Nore Roll.

Related terms

The Manx word for kipper is skeddan jiarg which literally translates as red herring. Compare to Irish scadán dearg.

A kipper is also sometimes referred to as a "red herring", although particularly strong curing is required to produce a truly red kipper.^[4] This term can be dated to the late Middle Ages as quoted here c1400 Femina (Trin-C B.14.40) 27: "He eteþ no ffyssh But heryng red." Samuel Pepys used it in his diary entry of 28 February 1660 "Up in the morning, and had some red herrings to our breakfast, while my boot-heel was a-mending, by the same token the boy left the hole as big as it was before."^[5]

Kipper time is the season in which fishing for salmon is forbidden in Great Britain, originally the period May 3 to January 6, in the River Thames by an Act of Parliament.

Kipper season refers (particularly among fairground workers, market workers, taxi drivers and the like) to any lean period in trade, particularly the first three or four months of the year; possibly a reference to the above usage, or to the need to live frugally during such a period, by (for instance) living off kippers.

See also

Processes

• food preservation
• curing
• smoking
• Solomon Gundy

Smoked herring

• Bloater, whole-smoked herring
• buckling, hot-smoked decapitated herring

Other preserved fish

• Arbroath Smokie, smoked haddock
• Finnan Haddie, smoked haddock
• Dried and salted cod

Other

• Orange kipper
• Red herring, something true but irrelevant

References

External links

Look up kipper in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• "The lure of red herring", history of smoked fish varieties.
• History of fish smoking
• Isle of Man Kipper Museum

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