Culinary Fun Fact: Salmon Pin Bones

Food Scientist Harold McGee tells us in “On Food and Cooking,” (Scribner 2004) that fish in the herring, salmon, and related families have these pin bones to “help stiffen some of the connective-tissue sheets and direct the muscular forces among them.” Other members of the salmon family include steelhead, trout, whitefish, and Arctic char. Basically, the pin bones allow the fish to swim faster.