Smoked

Smoke is both a flavour and a preservative, the oldest way of keeping oily fish before the tin existed. Cold-smoking over oak or alder firms the flesh and leaves it deep and savoury without cooking it through; the tin then keeps it. It suits fatty fish that can carry the intensity: trout, salmon, herring, mackerel, mussels, oysters. Smoked trout is the gentlest landing in the whole category; smoked oysters and kippers are the assertive end. In scrambled eggs, or on toast with something acidic to cut it.