Baconn'd herrying

From a Facebook post (10/2/24) that I want to keep so that I don't lose the information:

 One of my friends posted this video and asked what baconn'd herrying was. I don't remember which one of ya'll and I thought that that person had tagged me. Alas, I am unable to find the poster. With hope, you will read this.

The piece in question is at time stamp 14:30 and the full quote is:

Furft, a loif of brede in trenchors, 2 manchets, a quart of bere, a quart of wyne, 2 pecys of faltfisch, 6 baconn'd herrying, · 4 white herring or a dysche of sproits.

The Works: Together With His Life, And Notes On His Life Of... (Samuel Johnson).

I did some digging and it looks like "bacon herring" is an old Scottish term for redden herrings, or red herrings, or kippers, as they are known, today.

"Writing about 1585, Montgomerie of Hesilheid, a member of a family that provided one of Kintyre's "Lowland Lairds", complained in a poem, "This is no life I lead upon a land with raw red herring reisted in a reek." In earlier times, herring were prepared for redding by being salted whole in the fish houses in heaps about two feet deep. This lasted about two days when they were washed and hung up in the smoke house on wooden rods pushed through the gills and mouths. After seven days of smoking, the oil was allowed to drip from the fish for two days, when the fire was relit. The whole process was twice repeated, and then the smoking was continued until the herring were sufficiently cured for the particular market to which they were to be sent. In the modern process, the ungutted fish are "roused", i.e. salted in vats for one or two weeks, washed and smoked for about a week, the smoking being interrupted as before to allow the oil to drip away. Red herrings were variously known as bacon herring, militiamen, and Glasgow magistrates. "Reds" were traditionally supplied to the Levant. Kippers, of course, are split and gutted before being smoked."

- Fish and Fowl and Good Red Herring, by A. I. B. Stewart. The Kintyre Antiquarian & Natural History SocietyMagazine. WebEdition3 / Mar1997