There is very little connective tissue in fish—about 3 percent of its weight, as opposed to 15 percent in land animals—and what there is is very fragile and easily converted into gelatin. The combination of sparse, weak connective tissue and short muscle bundles results in the tenderness of fish, and its troublesome tendency to fall apart altogether during cooking.
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The landmark study of bread staling came as early as 1852, when the Frenchman Jean-Baptiste Boussingault, a pioneer in the study of nitrogen fixation (he demonstrated that certain plants increase the nitrogen content of soil and that soil alone—or, as we know today, certain soil bacteria—could do the same), showed that bread could be hermetically sealed to prevent it from losing water, and yet still go stale. He further established that staling could be reversed by reheating the bread to 140F
(60C): the temperature, we now know, at which starch gelatinizes. Subsequent research has shown that the starch phase is indeed the culprit, though gluten is involved in a minor way.
