Hooray for the herring, king of fishes

Silver darlings: ‘It’s a wonderful fish – fresh, salted, kippered, bloatered, bucklinged, vinegar-pickled, red, silver or golden.’ Photograph: Michael Probst/AP

It’s great that herring, the king of fishes, is at last a trending dish with top chefs (Comeback kipper: the fall and rise of Britain’s favourite breakfast fish, 4 November). Torched mackerel doth not compare.

But England’s strange opposition to herring-eating goes back to the Reformation at least – popular Protestantism was rooted less in knotty questions about transubstantiation than resentment of fasting.