This is a remunerative business when conducted on the best principles, employing children at trifling wages. I have found the following to be the best method: Provide a wooden trough eight feet long by a yard wide, and eighteen inches deep; fix strips of wood an inch square along the sides, lengthwise of the vat, and six inches above one another. On these will rest the spits, which must be of iron wire, a yard long, and so as just to go within the vat. Pick out all the small fish and rubbish, and wash the bulk in salt and water, as for bloaters, but not too many at once, as they are apt to sweat if lying long together, and then would never be bright when smoked. Use a saturated solution of common salt, or, preferably, of rock salt, and if you intend to produce “bloated sprats,” two hours will be sufficient to let them remain in pickle; run off the brine, and put the fish on the spits, which may be a little pointed at one end. Hang them in a free current of air till next day, and smoke them with
| Oak lops | 2 | parts |
| Sawdust | 2 | parts |
| Beech or birch chips | 2 | parts. |
until they are the colour of new sovereigns. These will not keep well more than four or five days, and are generally esteemed. If you want dried sprats for commerce, let them remain in the brine four hours, dry them well when on the spits, in a current of air, and when they begin to lose their plumpness, smoke them with similar fuel till of the colour of Spanish mahogany. These when packed in boxes, like cigar boxes, will suit for exportation to the European Continent, where many thousands of boxes are sent every winter.
ALDBOROUGH SMOKED SPRATS.
Many gentlemen who delight in highly smoked relishes, inquire for these articles, and as they are seldom to be procured north of the metropolis, I subjoin an easy way of getting them. In the beginning of the sprat season—November—take a bushel of fish, pick out all the largest ones, and with a dozen pounds of common coarse salt or rock salt at hand, throw a layer of it into the bottom of your salting tub, then a layer of fish, and so on in alternate layers to the end; let them lie four hours, mixing them about in the tub two or three times, this will fix the scales, which are cleared off the fish by the “washing” process. Now take the sprats up, and with a basket wash them quickly in very strong salt-and-water, using the same salt if you choose, and get them on to your spits, and dry them as soon as a strong current of air will accomplish it. Smoke them with oak alone, lops and sawdust, until they are of a very dark red colour, and when quite cold, pack them in round shallow kits, in circles, the heads lying all one way, and the fish on their backs. The appearance of them is anything but inviting, yet they are very good, and are always eaten without cooking. Vast quantities used to be exported to the Netherlands, Holland, and the German States; they are also well adapted for sea-stores.
BRITISH ANCHOVIES.
If it were worth while to favour the deception, you must select your fish from out of half a bushel of the freshest you can get, retaining only the middle-sized ones, for the real Gorgona fish are never so large as our large sprats, and never so small as our little ones, and your’s should also be all of the same size. Pull off the heads—not cutting them—in a rough manner, and draw out the gut. Wash not and wipe not the fish, but put them in straight-sided unglazed earthen jars, wood is preferable, in layers alternately with this mixture:
| Bay salt | 2 | lb. |
| Sal prunelle | 2 | oz. |
| Cochineal, in fine powder | 2 | oz. |
pressing them down as you proceed, and letting the top layer of the mixture be at least two inches thick. Get cork bungs cut to fit well, and secure them with plenty of melted resin. Bury the jars in dry sand in your cellar or store room, “out of the way,” and do not disturb them for nine months, or till the next sprat season. A fortnight before you would broach your “prize,” dissolve
| Gum dragon | 2 | oz. |
| Sal prunelle | 2 | oz. |
| Red sanders | 1 | oz. |