Kipper

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This article is about the fish. For other uses see kipper (disambiguation).

A kipper, also known as a red herring, is a whole fish that has been split from tail to head, eviscerated, salted, and cold smoked. Typically, the species is a herring or salmon, but traditionally it is any fish found in great numbers and caught during its spawning period. Spawning fish are not good to eat fresh and usually arrive in great abundance, thus they are salted and smoked to improve flavour and preservation.

1 Origin
2 Trivia
3 References
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] Origin

The Old English origin of the word has various parallels, such as Icelandic kippa which means "to pull, snatch" and the Danish word kippen which means "to seize, to snatch". 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.

This photo shows the place, in a street about 50m from Seahouses harbour, where the kipper "accident" in 1843 is said to have occurred.

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..."<ref>Mark Kurlansky, 2002. Salt: A World History, ISBN 0-8027-1373-4</ref>. One example of this legendary origin can be found in the story of John Woodger at Seahouses in Northumberland, England around 1843, in which kippering happened accidentally, when fish for processing was left overnight in a room with a smoking stove. We know this to be false because the origin of the word kipper is Old English; the English philologist and ethnographer Walter William Skeat derives it from the Old English kippian, to spawn. We know 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 man has been using salt to preserve food. We also know kippered fish were eaten in Germany and reached Scandinavia sometime during the Middle Ages.

As a verb, to kipper 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 logically be called "kippered."

The Manx word for kipper is skeddan jiarg which literally translates as red herring.

Image:Kippered Herring can190g Appel.jpg

A kipper is also sometimes referred to in the English language as a "red herring". This term can be dated to the mid seventeenth century, and is used by Samuel Pepys in his diary for the 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."<ref>Pepys Samuel (1893). The Diary of Samuel Pepys M.A. F.R.S.. Samuel Pepys' Diary. Retrieved on February 21, 2006.</ref>

[edit] Trivia

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.

Kippers today are extremely popular in the Isle of Man where thousands are produced annually in the City of Peel where two kipper houses smoke herring and export them to the world: Moore's Kipper Yard and Devereau & Son Ltd. A kipper meal is known as tatties and herrin in the Scottish Lowlands and spuds and herrin in the Isle of Man, where kippers are usually served with potatoes and buttered bread.

The small village of Craster in Northumberland, England, is world famous for its herring kippers which are still made in traditional smokehouses. The only difference is that the fish themselves now come from the Atlantic, instead of local waters.