Isinglass may be obtained from many fish. Jackson states, that the sounds of cod afford it; and that the lakes of America abound with fish, from which the very finest isinglass may be obtained. This substance is best prepared in summer, as frost impairs the colour, and deprives it of weight and of gelatinous principle.
It is made into jellies and blanc-manger, by the cook and confectioner, and with some sort of balsam, spread on silk, forms the court-plaister of the shops.
Fish maws are the dried stomachs of fishes, like our cod’s sounds, which being considered a great luxury by the Chinese, and as possessing strengthening and aphrodisiac properties, are brought over in the junks from the Indian islands.
Crawford states, that they often fetch upwards of £14 per cwt. in the Canton market. The exports of fish maws from Bombay average from 1500 to 2500 cwts. per annum; from Madras, about 50 cwts.; and from Bengal about 4,000 lbs.
Caviar is the common name for a preparation of the dried spawn, or salted roe of fish. The black caviar is made from the roe of sturgeon, and a single large fish will sometimes yield as much as 120 lbs. of roe. A cheaper and less prized red kind is obtained from the roe of the gray mullet, and some of the carp species, which are common in the rivers, and on the shores of the Black Sea. Caviar is principally consumed in Russia, Germany, and Italy, by the Greeks, during their long fasts, and also in small quantities in England. Inferior caviar is made into small, dry cakes. One thousand cwt. of caviar has been shipped from Odessa in a single season, and from Astracan, about 30,000 barrels. The produce of caviar from the Caspian sea, some years ago, was as much as a million and a half of pounds.
A preparation called botargo is made on the coasts of the Mediterranean from the spawn of a kind of fine mullet of a red color. The best is said to be made at Tunis, but it is also common in Sicily.
The dried roe of an enormous species of shad, which frequents the great river of Siak in Sumatra, constitutes an article of commerce in the East. According to Dr. Richardson, very good bread may be made from the roe of the pollack, an ocean fish (Gadus pollachius), found on both sides of the Atlantic, and in the Indian seas: on the British coasts it is often termed the cod-fish; and when young, the whiting pollack. In North America, this fish is so plentiful that it is salted and sold by the quintal like cod or ling.
The Chinook Indians of the Columbia rivers are very fond of herrings’ roes, which they collect in the following manner:—They sink cedar branches to the bottom of the river, in shallow places, by placing upon them a few heavy stones, taking care not to cover the green foliage, as the fish prefer spawning on anything green, and they literally cover all the branches by next morning with spawn. The Indians wash this off in their water-proof baskets, to the bottom of which it sinks; this is squeezed by the hand into little balls and then dried, and is very palatable.
The large roe of the Callipeva fish, already alluded to, is considered a delicacy in the West Indies. The mode of curing it differs widely from that in which the roe of the sturgeon and the sterlet is prepared.
The following is the account given by Goldsmith, in his History of the Earth and Animated Nature, of the way in which the latter is manufactured:—