is cod which has been salted, usually dry salted (as opposed to being steeped in liquid brine), and then partially dried. After the salting, the water content of the fish will be just under 60%; after the drying, around 40%. (Stockfish is cod which has simply been dried, to the point where water content is around 15% and it is hard like a stick.) Depending on the degree of treatment, salt cod may have a white ‘frost’ of salt on it, or be creamy in colour.
| Fresh cod | Salt cod | |
|---|---|---|
| French | cabillaud, morue fraîche | morue |
| Portuguese | bacalhau | bacalhau |
| Spanish | bacalao | bacalao |
| Italian | merluzzo | baccalà |
One point which stands out from the table is that in some languages the same word is used for ‘cod’ and ‘salt cod’. These are languages of people who do not have fresh cod swimming in their waters and who have a long tradition of eating salt cod. So far as they are concerned, cod is salt cod! That goes for the Portuguese and the Spaniards. The French are in a different position, since they have a N. Atlantic coast as well as a Mediterranean one, and it is in French that the greatest possibilities of confusion exist. They use the word morue for salt cod, but also speak of morue fraîche, which is fresh cod, and in the north they have a completely separate and different name for fresh cod, ‘cabillaud’. The French also possess one of the best known of all salt cod dishes, Brandade de morue (see brandade).
The Portuguese are the greatest enthusiasts for salt cod. They call it fiel amigo (faithful friend) and display great connoisseurship when visiting their special salt cod shops (e.g. in the rua do Arsenal in Lisbon, near the waterfront). Each such establishment will offer about a dozen different grades, and each has a fearsome guillotine-like contraption built into the serving counter, so that the merchant can slice off exactly the amount of the stiff unyielding stuff that the customer (of any class— salt cod knows no social barriers in Portugal) might want.
The Portuguese are not without competitors, such as Italians and Spaniards, and people in various parts of France, and the Caribbean islands and parts of S. America and Africa. But in many parts of the world salt cod arouses no emotion whatsoever and no one eats it (except for any immigrants of Portuguese or Spanish or Italian descent).
There are interesting historical reasons for all this. To set them out in full would involve the history of international and trade relations in the N. Atlantic over several centuries, the history of the Roman Catholic Church and its fast days, that of the slave trade and colonialism, that of shipbuilding and fishing gear, and also to some extent that of food conservation and cookery. Kurlansky (1997) offers guidance through these shoals.
To be brief, both salt cod and stockfish have their origins in early medieval times. Europeans, belonging to the Catholic faith and observing meatless days, needed a lot of fish, and stockfish from Norway was a valuable commodity as far back as the 10th century. Really large supplies of cod off the N. American coast, especially on the Newfoundland Banks, had possibly been located even at that time by intrepid fishermen from Iceland and Norway, but it was only after Cabot ‘discovered’ Newfoundland in 1497 that Europeans—with Portuguese, Spanish, French, and, ultimately, English fishermen in the lead—began to exploit this resource seriously.
This plenitude of American cod represented great wealth for anyone who could get it back to Europe. Methods of conserving fish at that time were (1) dry-salting and drying; (2) salting in brine; (3) just drying; or (4) smoking. Method (2) suited fatty fish, but not cod. Method (3), used for producing stockfish in Norway, would not work on the damp and misty shores of Newfoundland. Method (4), by itself, has only a marginal effect on keeping qualities. So method (1) was adopted. The cod were beheaded, split along the belly, cleaned, and rid of their backbones (except for a small piece by the tail). Then they were stacked with layers of salt between them, and the salt began to extract the water from them and replace it. Later, they would be dried and would become the salt cod of commerce.
The impact of this N. Atlantic trade was felt everywhere: from the small workshops manufacturing boots and shoes in S. Devon to afford ballast on the fishing vessels' outward journey, to the merchants who benefited from the triangular trade between Newfoundland, S. England, and Portugal to develop fortified port wine to tickle the fancy of the 18th-century gentleman.
Technological advances in curing cod have been made since the 16th century; but the basics are still the same, and so are the procedures by which the product is prepared for consumption. There are many different views about how much soaking in fresh water is needed for this purpose; but a middle-of-the-road position would be that it should soak for eighteen hours, with three changes of water. The pieces are then scaled and cooked in any of several hundred ways. (An examination of books pertaining to salt cod in the National Library in Lisbon brought to light a remarkable compilation, already including over 100 recipes, by Febrósia Mimoso; but she was outdone by an anonymous work of 1927 which declared ‘more than three hundred’.)
Alan Davidson was a distinguished author and publisher, and one of the world's best-known writers on fish and fish cookery. In 1975 he retired early from the diplomatic service—after serving in, among other places, Washington, Egypt, Tunisia, and Laos, where he was British Ambassador—to pursue a fruitful second career as a food historian and food writer extraordinaire. Among his popular books are Seafood of South-East Asia, North Atlantic Seafood, and Mediterranean Seafood. In 2003, shortly before his death, he was awarded the Erasmus Prize for his contribution to European culture.
Burgess, G. H. O., et al. (1965), Fish Handling and Processing, Edinburgh: HMSO.
Cutting, C. L. (1955), Fish Saving, London: L. Hill.
Kurlansky, Mark (1997), Cod, New York: Knopf.
