Kippering (to kipper) means to preserve meat (fish, poultry, etc.) by rubbing with salt and/or spices, followed by drying in smoke or warm air. This process is customarily enhanced by cleaning, filleting, butterflying or slicing the food to expose maximum surface area to the drying and preservative agents.
Originally applied to the preservation of surplus fish (particularly those known as "kips," harvested during spawning runs), kippering has come to mean the preservation of any fish, poultry, beef or other meat in like manner.
When used as a noun, kipper, in the absence of more specific context, typically refers to herring or other small fish, kippered in the butterfly fashion (slit lengthwise ventrally, cleaned and unfolded in two symmetrical halves along the dorsal ridge).
The origin of the word kipper is Old English; the English philologist and ethnographer, Walter William Skeat, traces its derivation from the Old English, kippian, to spawn.[1]
The practice of preserving fish by drying, using some combination of salt and smoke —particularly the seasonally plentiful spawning salmon and herring— predates 19th century Britain, possibly even recorded history.
Thomas Nashe writes in 1599 about a fisherman from Lothingland in the Great Yarmouth area, who discovered by accident the benefit of smoking herring.[2] It is also known that kippered fish were eaten in Germany and the custom reached Scandinavia in the Middle Ages.