Fish fingers Restaurant BIFA Hotel

Fish fingers, also known as fishsticks, are a processed food made using a whitefish such as cod, haddock or pollock which have been battered or breaded.

In the United Kingdom in the 1930s, most of the herring catch was pickled and exported to other Northern European countries.[citation needed] In an attempt to make herring more appealing on the home market, companies tried to present it in a new way, creating herring fishfingers called “herring savouries” and were tested on the market against a bland control product of cod sticks, sold as “fish fingers.” Shoppers in Southampton and South Wales, where the test was conducted, confounded expectations by showing an overwhelming preference for the cod.

In 1953, Gorton-Pew Fisheries, now known as Gorton’s of Gloucester, was the first company to introduce a frozen ready-to-cook fish stick, Gorton’s Fish Sticks, which won the Parents Magazine Seal of Approval. Cod fishsticks were first produced in Great Yarmouth,[1] and introduced in Britain on 26 September 1955.