Читать книгу The Taste of Britain - Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall - Страница 58

Similar to the herring, with a high oil content, mackerel flesh spoils rapidly when fresh and the hot-smoking process over oak chips was a method of processing which the curers have developed and which has become as popular as kippers. Mackerel is fished all around the British coasts, and has long been a mainstay of the South West. In the early twentieth century, the catch was preserved by canning (in Cornwall) or salting (in parts of Scotland). When the herring fishery declined in the 1970s, processors turned their attention to mackerel as an alternative. Particularly good catches were made off the Cornish coast and a substantial smoking industry developed, using both whole fish and fillets.

When the Scottish herring fisheries were closed in 1977 to conserve stocks, attitudes there (where mackerel had hitherto been regarded as inferior) changed and catches began to increase; smoking was also taken up as a means of using the catch.