St. John’s, N.B., and Cape Breton furnish us with these highly
flavoured fish, smoked with the pine branches of that region. Small
herrings visit our coasts soon after Christmas, and being “shot,” or
without roes, are not much esteemed, but will serve well for curing in
this way. Let them lie in a saturated solution of common salt so long
as just to taste of the brine, then put them on spits, dry them a week,
and smoke them for a month with deal chips, having much turpentine in
them, from carpenters’ shops, and with the fruit of the larch fir tree,
fir cones, and top branches of any of our firs, and some oak sawdust to
smother the flame. These fish are generally eaten without being cooked,
and will keep a long time, packed in small boxes, or buried in malt
cooms, &c. &c.