Kipper \Kip"per\, n. [D. kippen to hatch, snatch, seize. Cf. {Kipe}.] 1. (Zo["o]l.) A salmon after spawning.
2. A salmon split open, salted, and dried or smoked; -- so called because salmon after spawning were usually so cured, not being good when fresh. [Scot.]
{Kipper time}, the season in which fishing for salmon is forbidden. [Eng. & Scot.]
Kipper \Kip"per\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. {Kippered}; p. pr. & vb. n. {Kippering}.] To cure, by splitting, salting, and smoking. ``Kippered salmon.'' --Dickens.
In Achiltibuie herrings are smoked for 18 hours using 'cold combustion', a method producing slow, cool smoke. The real secret of a good kipper, though, lies in the wood shavings that generate the smoke.
Often commercial smokehouses will smoke their herring for just three or four hours with a smoke so hot it immediately forms an impervious crust over the kipper, preventing the absorption of smoke.
But strangely enough there is a fairly well-defined kipper consumer's profile, Dunbar told me.
The kipper is as Scottish as tartan plaid, she asserted, and the world's finest. How could anyone prove that, I wanted to know.