Herrings are extraordinarily healthy—and cheap. They are caught by the million—who also eat them; and whether fresh or dried, raw or salted, they are one of Nature’s delicacies. Fresh herrings offer the largest amount of nutriment for one penny of any kind of animal food. A fresh herring weighing 4½ ozs. contains 240 grains of carbon and 36 grains of nitrogen; and a dried herring weighing 3 oz. contains 269 grains of carbon and 41 grains of nitrogen. It is obvious by this what smoking will do by decreasing weight and increasing nutriment.
Red herrings are by no means to be despised, though it is a mistake to imagine that they are caught in a state of redness. In that fine old book, “The Yarmouth Fisherman,” which is not much read nowadays, piscator says to the tourist: “Sir, we lay ourselves out to oblige all the gents that come from London, but we cannot make a red herring swim.”
Thereanent is a quaint signboard outside the Schifferhaus in the old Hanseatic town of Lübeck, one of the most beautiful taverns in the world, and the haunt of old sea-dogs since the sixteenth century. The signboard represents a fisherman and two amateurs angling from a boat; the former has caught a fine kipper and the latter are looking supremely disgusted. The legend under the picture runs: “One Cannot Please Everybody.”
Kippers and their kin have never lacked admirers, and it is on record that the Emperor Charles V. made a pilgrimage to the tomb of the venerable Dutchman who is supposed to have invented pickled herrings.
Fried Herrings.
To come from herrings in the abstract to herrings in the concrete, try this in Chaffinda: Two very fresh herrings, very clean and dry. Fry them in three tablespoons of oil or two of butter, with a squeeze of lemon, salt, pepper, six peppercorns and a tablespoon of vinegar. After they have cooked for eight minutes put the fish aside in a hot dish. Then cut a good-sized Spanish onion into rings, fry these in the oil left by the herrings till they are of a dark brown colour, taking great care not to burn them. When ready, which should be in about six minutes, heap them round the herrings and serve with quarters of lemon. This is a lordly dish, and if properly concocted it leaves you in that state that you will love all mankind—and even tolerate the Chinese.
Dean Nowell, or Noel, a clerical Izaak Walton, and Dean of St. Paul’s (1507-1602) said that the only thing wrong with the herring was that it preferred the sea to the river. The Dean angled much in the Ash at Hadham; he wrote the Church Catechism, invented bottled beer (by accident), and fished for perch and souls. Peace be to his!
There are as many ways of cooking the herring as there are days in the year; even Bismarck invented one, but there are other fish in the sea which demand Chaffinda’s attention, and however enticing the subject may be, it will not do to linger over it.
The lordly salmon was not always so honoured in its exclusiveness as it is to-day. In our grandfathers’ time it was still frequenting the Thames, and London servants, when engaged, used to stipulate that they were not to be fed on it more than twice a week.
Chafed Salmon.