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A kipper is a whole herring, a small, oily fish, that has been split in a Butterflying from tail to head along the dorsal ridge, gutted, salted or Pickling, and cold-smoked over smouldering wood chips (typically oak).
In the United Kingdom, Ireland and some regions of North America, kippers are most commonly eaten for breakfast. In the United Kingdom, kippers, along with other preserved smoked or salted fish such as the bloater and buckling, were also once commonly enjoyed as a high tea or supper treat, most popularly with inland and urban working-class populations before World War II.
As a verb, kippering ("to kipper") means to preserve by rubbing with salt or other spices before drying in the open air or in smoke. 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. The process is usually enhanced by cleaning, filleting, butterflying or slicing the food to expose maximum surface area to the drying and preservative agents.
The dyeing of kippers was introduced as an economy measure in the First World War by avoiding the need for the long smoking processes. This allowed the kippers to be sold quickly, easily and for a substantially greater profit. Kippers were originally dyed using a coal tar dye called brown FK (the FK is an abbreviation of "for kippers"), kipper brown or kipper dye. Today, kippers are usually brine-dyed using a natural annatto dye, giving the fish a deeper orange/yellow colour. European Community legislation limits the acceptable daily intake (ADI) of Brown FK to 0.15 mg/kg. Not all fish caught are suitable for the dyeing process, with mature fish more readily sought, because the density of their flesh improves the absorption of the dye. An orange kipper is a kipper that has been dyed orange.
Kippers from the Isle of Man and some Scotland producers are not dyed; instead, the smoking time is extended in the traditional manner.
In the UK, kippers are usually served at breakfast, although their popularity has declined since the Victorian and Edwardian eras.
In the United States, where kippers are much less commonly eaten than in the UK, they are almost always sold as either canned "kipper snacks" or in jars found in the refrigerated foods section. These are precooked and may be eaten without further preparation.
Mallaig, once the busiest herring port in Europe, is famous for its traditionally smoked kippers, as are Stornoway kippers and Loch Fyne kippers. The harbour village of Craster in Northumberland is famed for , which are prepared in a local smokehouse, sold in the village shop and exported around the world.
Kipper time is the season in which fishing for salmon in the River Thames in the United Kingdom is forbidden by an Act of Parliament; this period was originally the period 3 May to 6 January but has changed since. Kipper season refers (particularly among fairground workers, market workers, taxi drivers and the like) to any lean period in trade, particularly the first three or four months of the year.
Members of the Canadian military referred to English people as kippers because they were believed to frequently eat kippers for breakfast.
The English (UK) idiom to "stitched (or "done") up like a kipper" is commonly used to describe a situation where a person has (depending on context) been "fitted up" or "framed"; "used", unfairly treated or betrayed; or cheated out of something, with no possibility of correcting the "wrong" done.
In the children's books The Railway Series, and in the television show Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends, The Flying Kipper is a nickname for a fast fish train usually pulled by Henry the Green Engine.
The United States Department of Agriculture defines "Kippered Beef" as a cured dry product similar to beef jerky but not as dry.
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