A great deal of the Welsh salmon is “poached,” or taken
surreptitiously, in the long dark nights, by means of lanterns and
“spearing,” when the fish, attracted by the light, come to the water’s
edge. The salmon is often lank and out of season, and consequently of
inferior quality, yet some of it is tolerable and inquired for at the
shops by gentlemen, who having resided some time in Wales, and, as it
often happens, prejudiced in favour of home productions. However, if it
possesses any admired flavour it arises, not so much from the method of
curing it, as from the fuel it is smoked with, and which the poachers
can easily procure, to wit, dried fern, and young gorse, besides short
grass turfs which grow on commons and on the mountain sides, and which
is pared off the land very thin, and dried in the sunny weather. They
dry and smoke the salmon in some remote part of their cottage, or
hut, and hence its dark and dirty appearance, and there it remains
until traders intending it for the Chester and Bristol markets come
and purchase it. I conclude it pays the curers pretty well for their
trouble, since it costs them nothing. Take a fresh salmon, sixteen to
twenty pounds weight, split it open at the belly, beginning at about
eight inches from where the tail sets on, and cutting through to the
bone up to the nose, remove the gills and all the refuse, wipe well
out, and quite dry. Mix an ounce of ground white pepper with a pound of
coarse sugar, and rub all the inside with it, particularly at the bone,
for fifteen minutes or more; then bring the sides together, lay it on a
dish, and rub the remainder of the mixture all over the outside of the
fish, the back fins and thick part of the shoulders. So let it lie, the
thin side uppermost, until next day in a cool room. Then rub again all
over with the liquor produced, and let it lie twenty-four hours longer,
the thick side uppermost. Now hang it up by the tail until dripping
ceases, lay it again on a clean dish, strew fine salt well over the
inside, bring the sides together, and rub the outside well with fine
salt, leaving the fish covered to the thickness of half-a-crown with
pounded rock salt, a thin stratum of which must be under the salmon.
Each day the runnings must be thrown away――for observe it is hot
weather when fresh salmon is cured――and more salt applied. In five
days from the commencement it will be safely cured, provided that the
thick part of the back and shoulders have been well supplied with the
salt heaped under, around, and above those parts. Then take up the
fish, brush off the salt, wipe dry, prop the sides open with splints
of wood, and hang it up by the tail in a current of air. Next day hang
it up by the _head_ for twelve hours, and after that remove it to your
chimney, where, suspended with the head downwards, you may smoke it
with beech chips two parts, oak sawdust two parts, and fern or grass
turfs two parts, for two weeks, keeping the sides wide open with
splints of wood. As soon as the salmon is taken out of smoke, and while
it may be a little warm and pliable, lay some well dried oat straw in
the inside, bring the sides together and tie round with string. In two
months you will have prime dried salmon for broiling in steaks, cut
three quarters of an inch thick, and will keep good many months.