The Clupea Harengus grows up to 30 or 400 mm long and weighs up to 500 grams, of which the head, intestines and bones make up half of the culinary weight. Mostly, however, it gets into the net smaller and lighter. The untreated specimens – therefore only gutted and frozen – are sold as “green” herrings, the heavily salted ones as salted herrings, the smoked ones as kippers.
Herrings can be pickled whole or filleted and are then called Bismarck herrings after their admirer, the Iron Chancellor. Wrapped around a pearl onion and a piece of gherkin and fixed with a wooden stick, they become a rollmop. Herrings crowd canned food, enrich – preferably together with red beetroot – leaf salads or lie in aspic. You will hardly find a more versatile fish. The fat herring was considered a poor man’s food until deep into the fifties. “Boiled, peeled potatoes and fried herring” were unmistakably in the air on Fridays, even in the Protestant north of Europe.
That has changed. The overfishing of the most important fishing areas with purse seines and drift nets has led to a total ban on fishing in some regions in 1980. This was especially the case off Norway and Iceland. The other herring stocks from the western British waters to the Baltic Sea may only be fished within the framework of international fishing quotas. The supply became scarce
