Cod in Viking Greenland and Imperial Rome and Basque Nova Scotia. Fishing for cod and gutting cod and salting cod and cooking cod. Eggs and hatchlings and adult cod. Cod and slavery; cod and the Spanish Armada; cod and the decline of the Grand Banks fisheries. Once again, as with Salt, Mark Kurlansky has written a tightly-focused history of a single commodity, revealing the whole world through this fish-eye lens.
Cod begins with the mysterious medieval source of the codfish, in the fishing vessels of an equally mysterious people, the Basque. Cod was sometimes caught closer to the Continent, but never in such vast numbers as the Basque supplied.
Catholicism gave the Basques their great opportunity. The medieval church imposed fast days in which sexual intercourse and the eating of flesh were forbidden, but eating "cold foods" was permitted... In total, meat was forbidden for almost half the days of the year, and those lean days became salt cod days...The Basques were getting richer every Friday. But where was all this cod coming from? The Basques, who had never even said where they came from, kept their secret.
To follow the Basque to their secret source of cod became a goal of money-seeking adventurers. In 1475, following the successful attempt by the Hanseatic League to cut Bristol off from Icelandic cod, Thomas Croft went into partnership with John Jay to find the island in the Atlantic called Hy-Brasil, believed to be the source of Basque cod. They found enough (although they never revealed where) to leave them uninterested when the Hanseatics tried to negotiate to reopen the Iceland trade with Bristol in 1490. Interestingly, their cod
...arrived in Bristol dried, and drying cannot be done on a ship deck.... a letter has recently been discovered...sent to Christopher Columbus, a decade after the Croft affair in Bristol... [The letter] alleged that [Columbus] knew perfectly well they had been to America already... Fishermen were keeping their secrets, while explorers were telling the world.
Not to miss this point, Kurlansky cites two other explorers who "claimed" shores in the New World for various governments. John Cabot (nee Giovanni Caboto, of Genoa), claimed "New Found Land" for Henry VII, and reported as part of its wealth rocky coastlines suitable for drying the cod that teamed in its waters. When Jacques Cartier "discovered" the mouth of the St. Lawrence and claimed the Gaspé Peninsula for France, he found 1000 Basque fishing vessels already there.
But the Basques, wanting to keep a good secret, had never claimed it for anyone.
In the second part of the book, Limits, Kurlansky explores how the population of this fish, once so teeming that its supply was thought to be inexhaustible, could have collapsed so drastically. In 1873, Alexandre Dumas could write: "It has been calculated that if no accident prevented the hatching of the eggs and each egg reached maturity, it would take only three years to fill the sea so that you could walk across the Atlantic dryshod on the backs of cod." Cod were known to be amazing prolific. A female codfish of "middling size" (which in the mid-1800s would be over two feet long) might contain 8 or 9 million eggs. How could such a numerous, prolific animal fail to sustain its numbers?
Article comments
1 - SFC SKI
I lived on Cape Cod for five years, the history of that area is so intertwined with fishing in general and cod specifically, I will have to read this book.
2 - DrPat
Thoreau was amazed at the lack of quality control he observed on the salting docks at Cape Cod. He wrote about seeing a young fish salter spit tobacco into the drying fish, and waited for the salting foreman to chastise his worker. Instead, he observed the older man do the same thing a few minutes later!
3 - Jim Carruthers
In his book, "The Secret Life of Lobsters", Trevor Corson details how the destruction of the cod fishery in the Maritimes, meant the lobster fishery could thrive in the last decade. Scientists discovered cod were the major predator of baby lobsters (they did this by super-gluing lobster spawn to mono-filament line and a tile and videoing what ate them.
The neighborhood I live in has a large Portuguese population, so Bacalhau is on the menu at most of the restaurants and bars.
4 - Aaman
That super-glue must have really bugged the cod
5 - SFC SKI
The Portugese have some great recipes, I hope I get back up to the Cape this year to get my fix of fish. Florida cuisine is a little different.
Always liked the Maritimes, too bad I am so far from them now.
6 - Jim Carruthers
My favourite Portuguese meal (which included cod) was in the then-Portuguese colony of Macao in a 16th century building overlooking the Pearl river delta, and drinking really fine wine imported from Portugal at really low cost because it was the last and first outpost of their empire.
7 - SFC SKI
One of the only regrets I have about not joining a sea-going service was that I haven't gotten to places like Macao, or most of the PAcific for that matter. My buddy is a square-knot sailorm, and he has some great experiences (as well as tattoos and penicillin shots ;) ) from the ports of call he has been too in that part of the world. The Portugese were actually first to the Persian Gulf , IIRC, but I don't think they had quite the longevity or cultural influence in that part of the world.
8 - Jim Carruthers
You think that might be due to a trend in history called the Moors who occupied Iberia and the Ottoman Empire? Just asking.
but I don't think they had quite the longevity or cultural influence in that part of the world.
Which, aside from cod, explains the popularity of mixed pork and seafood dishes in Portugal and Spain because they made it really difficult for Muslims and Jews.
9 - DrPat
Jim: The recipe section of the book has the history of and instructions for cooking Bacalao a la Vizcaina, a dish that is part of the standard repertoire for any Basque chef. Its characteristic flavor comes from the choricero, a tiny red pepper that grows in the province of Vizcaya.
Kurlansky also points out what we see labelled as "cod" on a restaurant menu is usually "hake", the unsalted fresh meat of the codfish.
10 - SFC SKI
Actually, the Portugese attempts at colonization in the Gulf were in the 1500's, after the Moors had been kicked out of Spain. I think that Portugal was also a center for maratime learning in that time period, as well. In any case, unless Macao and Curacao, the ME does not have a large amount of Portugese colonial heritage, though I did go to the remains of a Portugese bastion built in Fujairahm UAE.
11 - Jim Carruthers
The influence of Portugal in the middle east is irrelevant.
The real fruit and produce which comes from the bush is found in Brazil's Carmen Miranda.
And there's some sort of relationship to the smell of fish like cod.
12 - Angela Chen Shui
Jamaica's national dish is 'Ackee and Saltfish', which is what we call salted cod here. Salted cod has been a cheap protein staple from as far back as slavery days.
It is impossible to attend a 'good' Jamaican buffet and not be served ackee and saltfish. It's a dish that can be served for any one of the three major meals.
With breakfast and lunch, it's particularly good with boiled green bananas, fried plaintain, callaloo, fried dumpling and of course, hot chocolate boiled from the handmade round cocoa balls. mmmmmm..... delicious!
Go deh wid di 'stomp and go' recipe, Dr. Pat!!! ;-)
13 - DrPat
Ackee is a fruit brought from West Africa to Jamaica by Captain Bligh of Bounty infamy. If not picked when fully ripe, it is somewhat toxic. So I think I'll stick with "Stomp-and-Go", thanks!
14 - Angela Chen Shui
No prob... stomp and go or ackee, they're both delicious,,,, many people eat them together...
But as our national dish, we would have mastered its preparation, eh? Haitians, with all their voodoo stuff, are awed that Jamaicans eat a poisonous fruit that they don't touch!
;-)
15 - DrEnglish
It is unfortunate, but a lot of what Kurlansky says in this book simply isn't true. He has invented a number of stories (1,000 Basques boats in the Gulf of St. Lawrence in 1534? Hysterical.), and refers to documents which no one else - including historians who have been studying the subject for decades - has ever heard of. It is an enjoyable yarn, but nothing more.
16 - Lee form Jamaica Travel and Culture .com
I agree with Angela Chen. Cases of ackee poisoning are very rare. See my page on ackees for more information.