Notes on the text:

1. that have been exposed to cold until they are near freezing point – которые охлаждены почти до точки замерзания

2. storage life – продолжительность хранения

3. to impair their value – чтобы ухудшить их пищевые качества

4. intercellular fluid – внутриклеточный сок

5. heat transfer – теплообмен

6. weight transfer – массообмен

7. by spraying with cold brine – орошением холодным рассолом

4. Hanging

The split fish have to be stretched out somehow so as to ensure thorough exposure to the smoke, and practice varies considerably from place to place. Typical methods are handing on pairs of hooks, nailed at regular intervals along a wooden “tenter” stick or threading through the “lugs” on pointed metal “speats”. In the case of large “finnans”, a loose hook is sometimes clipped onto the projecting backbone in order to prevent the soft flesh of the “lugs” from tearing under the weight of the fish. Fillets tend to tear if hung by hooks through the flesh. They laid over either pairs of wooden strips or a metal loop, sometimes closed at both ends. “Reds” and bloaters are “speated” through the gill and mouth with wooden or metal rods, and sprats, when hot-smoked for canning as “sardines” are threaded the eyes on thin “speats”. Buckling with heads on are sometimes threaded in pairs on sticks. If smoked after beheading, they can be speated through the thickets part, or else suspended by a clip on the tail, although in this case any roe is liable to drop out of the fish, and liquid exuding during the cooking process drips onto the fish below, leaving unsightly stains. Predrying such hotsmoked fish for a period of half an hour or so at fairly low temperature, not above about 40°C is desirable for its effect on toughening the flesh so that it is not so unduly softened as to tear during the subsequent stage of cooking at higher temperatures. “Arbroath smokies”, which are headed and hot smoked, are tied in pairs with string. Sticks can be inserted in the gut cavities to keep the fish open and thus ensure through exposure to the smoke. Large whole split fish, such as salmon, are suspended by the tail and kept flat open during smoking by means of steaks or metal skewers threaded through the flesh. Salmon fillets are suspended by a loop of twine through a hole made in the “lug” gust under the “shoulder lone”. Many of those devices leave unsightly holes in the fish, and wooden tenter sticks, metal speats, etc., are difficult to keep clean. Fillets have wet, unsmoked patches where they touch the stick. Furthermore, the operation of hanging and unbanging is manually laborious, particularly with small fish. Only in Norway has any attempt been made to mechanize the threading on rods of even such tiny fish as sprat and immature herring.

Fish can be smoked satisfactorily on wire gauze trays, provided that the mean does not mark the skin or flesh excessively, and this practice is quite normal in North America, the fish hewing tilted a little so that smoke rising upward contacts both sides. With a mechanical kiln delivering horizontal flow of smoke, tray smoking seems just as convenient as hanging vertically, and more easily adaptable to mechanization.