I am attempting to make my own pickled herring. One of the recipes I found on-line calls for the use of the milt glands, which as far as I can tell are the male gonads. In cleaning the fish I found some of them to contain roe, and others to contain big white something-or-others of roughly the same size and shape as the roe sacs. Are these the milt glands?
The recipe calls for the cleaned fish and milt glands to be soaked in water overnight, and then for the milt glands to be pressed through a sieve and added to the pickle mixture. What will I be missing if I leave out the milt glands? That is, how do the glands affect the flavor of the final product?
Last question: since bull or sheep testicles are called Rocky Mountain Oysters, what would an appropriate slang name be for milt glands? Ocean Oysters calls up the wrong image. How about Ocean Balls?