A kipper is a whole herring (Clupea harengus) that has been split from head to tail, gutted, flattened into a butterfly, brined and then cold-smoked to a burnished bronze — the defining preserved fish of the British and Irish breakfast table. Unlike the hot-smoked fish that are cooked as they smoke, a kipper is cured in cool smoke that never gets hot enough to cook the flesh, so it keeps the herring's oily, silky texture while gaining a deep, resinous, wood-smoke aroma and a salty, savoury concentration. Traditionally grilled, fried or "jugged" in a jug of boiling water and eaten hot with butter and bread, the kipper is a plain, powerful thing: a whole small fish, bones and all, that tastes overwhelmingly of smoke, sea and oily fish, and that for two centuries fed the ports and pit villages of Britain as cheap, keepable protein.