Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World - Mark Kurlansky (1999)

A Cook’s Tale

ONE MIGHT SAY THAT IT [COD] IS THE ONLY FOOD,
APART FROM BREAD, WHICH, ONCE ONE HAS GOT USED
TO IT, ONE NEVER GETS BORED OF, WITHOUT WHICH ONE
COULD NOT LIVE AND WHICH ONE COULD NEVER
EXCHANGE FOR ANY DELICACY.

—Elena Ivanovna Molokhovets, A Gift to Young Housewives, St. Petersburg, 1862

SIX CENTURIES OF COD RECIPES

THE CORRECT WAY TO FLUSH A COD

“YES, YES, I WILL DESALINATE YOU, YOU GRANDE MORUE!”

—Émile Zola, Assommoir, 1877

There is no general agreement on how to resuscitate stockfish or saltfish. No two pieces of cured cod are of the exact same thickness, dryness, or saltiness, and furthermore, different people prefer different tastes, often depending on the type of dish being made. Soaking will generally take more than 24 hours, but for very dry stockfish it can be several days. Most cooks agree that the only way to know when a cured fish is ready for cooking is to break off a piece and taste it. The more it has been dried, the longer it must be soaked. Salted fish needs to have the water in which it is soaking changed periodically so that the fish is not sitting in salt water.

Hannah Glasse in the 1758 edition of her British book wrote that stockfish should be soaked in milk and warm water. Most modern cooks insist on cold water and many believe it is best when soaked in a refrigerator, especially during warm weather. Others have been known to turn to another modern invention, the flush toilet.

Deep inland in France, La France profonde, as the French like to say, on the far side of the mountain range called the Massif Central, is the Aveyron. It is a rugged region of high green sheep pastures, deep gorges, and jagged rock outcrop-pings, the most famous of which, in Roquefort-sur-Soulzon, provides the natural caves for aging the world’s most famous cheese. An isolated area where shepherds still speak a local dialect, the region would get supplies all the way from distant Bordeaux on river barges. Barges would move up the Garonne to the Lot to Rodez and other towns in the Aveyron. The stockfish, bought in Bordeaux and dragged in the river behind the barge for the two-day voyage, would be soft and ready for cooking when it arrived.

In the twentieth century, the Lot became increasingly polluted and unnavigable, but a new invention was well suited to the preparation of stockfish: the flush toilet. In 1947, the president of the Conseil, the governing body of France, asked his valet to flush the toilet once an hour for the next week in preparation for a special dinner he was preparing on Sunday. The dish was stockfish. The toilet was fed by a water tank mounted high up on the wall, the chasse d‘eau. A stockfish left in the chasse d’eau for two days was soft and ready for cooking. The system was also ideal for salted fish, since the water was easy to change. All of this may be deemed unaesthetic, but, unfortunately, it is now more hygienic than using the Garonne and its tributaries.

TWO VIEWS OF STOCKFISH

[STOCKFISH IS] HARD AS LUMPS OF WOOD, BUT FREE OF BAD FLAVOR, IN FACT, WITHOUT MUCH FLAVOR AT ALL ... THOUGH VERY NICE AS AN APPETIZER, AND AFTER ALL, ANYTHING THAT PERFORMS THAT FUNCTION CANNOT BE ALL THAT BAD.

—Poggio Bracciolini (celebrated Latin scholar), 1436

DRIED FISH IS A STAPLE FOOD IN ICELAND. THIS SHOULD BE SHREDDED WITH THE FINGERS AND EATEN WITH BUTTER. IT VARIES IN TOUGHNESS. THE TOUGHER KIND TASTES LIKE TOE-NAILS, AND THE SOFTER KIND LIKE THE SKIN OFF THE SOLES OF ONE’S FEET.

—W. H. Auden and Louis MacNeice,
Letters from Iceland, 1967

BEAT IT

Before the toilet and the refrigerator, the tool that seems inevitably tied to stockfish was the hammer. If stockfish is of good quality, it resembles a rough-hewn, soft wood a bit lighter than balsa. The fibers have to somehow be broken down.

Item, when it [cod] is taken in the far seas and it is desired to keep it for 10 or 12 years, it is gutted and its head removed and it is dried in the air and sun and in no wise by a fire, or smoked; and when this is done it is called stockfish. And when it hath been kept a long time, and it is desired to eat it, it must be beaten with a wooden hammer for a full hour, then set it to soak in warm water for a full 12 hours or more, then cook and skim it very well like beef.

—Author unknown,
Le Mesnagier de Paris, circa 1393

KILL IT: LUTEFISK

Norwegians soften stockfish to almost jelly by putting it in lye.

First the beaten stockfish is put in cold water for four or five days, but the water must be changed regularly. Then lye or pure, crumbled ash made of nothing but birch or beech is boiled in water in a pot and then set aside until the ashes fall to the bottom: then cold water is poured out of the pot into another container, where it stands until it is very clear. The fish is put in this clear water where it stays for three days and taken out of it three hours before it is to be washed in cold water and boiled like any other fish and eaten with melted butter and mustard.

—Marta María Stephensen,
A Simple Cookery Pocket Booklet for Gentlewomen, 1800
(translated by Hallfredur Örn Eiriksson)

DIVERSIONARY TACTIC

In 1982, British novelist Graham Greene, an elderly resident of Nice, started making seemingly paranoid public accusations about corruption in city hall. It was suggested that the famous author of intrigue was beginning to lose his grasp on reality. But when asked about Greene’s allegations in an interview, the mayor, Jacques Médecin, son of another famous Nice mayor, began talking about cooking and offered a recipe for stockfish. In time, the mayor slipped away to South America, where excellent salt cod is available but little in the way of true stockfish.

The following recipe, according to Médecin, who is not always taken at his word, was given to his father by a local fisherman named Barba Chiquin, which in dialect means “uncle who likes a good bottle.” Barba Chiquin would invite children over for this dish.

Take a dry stockfish, pound 100 grams on a stone with a hammer, reducing it to a kind of powder. For 100 grams of stockfish, crush 4 cloves of garlic in a mortar. Heat olive oil in a skillet until it smokes and brown 2 pébréta [hot peppers]. When the oil starts to smoke, toss in the mixture of dried stockfish and garlic. When this preparation is lightly browned, spread it on a piece of pain de compagne [country-style bread] and wolf it down.

—Jacques Médecin, ex-mayor of Nice

Médecin warned against trying the recipe unless you have a well-stocked wine cellar to deal “with a thirst which will last at least four or five days.”

Also see page 61.

THE BAD NEWS AT WALDEN POND

IT IS RUMORED THAT IN THE FALL THE COWS HERE ARE SOMETIMES FED COD’S-HEAD! THE GODLIKE PART OF THE COD, WHICH, LIKE THE HUMAN HEAD, IS CURIOUSLY AND WONDERFULLY MADE, FORSOOTH HAS BUT LITTLE LESS BRAIN IN IT,—COMING TO SUCH AN END! TO BE CRAUNCHED BE COWS! I FELT MY OWN SKULL CRACK WITH SYMPATHY. WHAT IF THE HEADS OF MEN WERE TO BE CUT OFF TO FEED THE COWS OF A SUPE- RIOR ORDER OF BEINGS WHO INHABIT THE ISLANDS IN THE ETHER? AWAY GOES YOUR FINE BRAIN, THE HOUSE OF THOUGHT AND INSTINCT, TO SWELL THE CUD OF A RUMINANT ANIMAL!—HOWEVER, AN INHABITANT ASSURED ME THAT THEY DID NOT MAKE A PRACTICE OF FEEDING COWS ON COD-HEADS; THE COWS MERELY WOULD EAT THEM SOMETIMES.

—Henry David Thoreau,
Cape Cod, 1851

Thoreau made these observations on a trip to Cape Cod the same year that Herman Melville’s Moby Dick would describe Nantucket cows wandering with cod’s heads on their feet. Thoreau was right that the heads were not likely to be offered to a cow, but the reason was that people like to eat them.

NOT THE LIPS: FRIED COD HEAD

Obtain 4 medium size cod heads. More for a large family. After they have been sculped—(to sculp heads: with sharp knife cut head down through to the eyes, grip back of head firmly and pull)—prepare to cook as follows:

Cut heads in two, skin and remove lips. Wash well and dry. Dip both sides of head in flour, sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste. Fry in fat until Golden Brown on both sides. Serve with potatoes and green peas, or any other vegetable preferred.

—Mrs. Lloyd G. Hann, Wesleyville, Newfoundland,
from Fat-back & Molasses: A Collection of
Favourite Old Recipes from Newfoundland & Labrador,
edited by Ivan F. Jesperson, St. John’s, 1974

NOT THE EYES: FISHERMAN’S COD-HEAD CHOWDER

8 cod heads, the eyes removed
3 oz salt pork
2 sliced onions
6 sliced potatoes
butter
salt and pepper

Try out (render) the pork. Add the onions and fry until golden. Lay in a kettle, then add the cod heads and potatoes. Cover with cold water and cook till the potatoes are done. Season; add a good chunk of butter.

Fishermen think removing the bones is sissy. Cod head of course contains the cods’ tongues and cheeks. Sometimes, too, the cod’s air sacs, known as the “lights” or “sounds,” were fried in salt pork and then added to the chowder.

—complied by Harriet Adams, comments by N. M. Halper,
Vittles for the Captain: Cape Cod Sea-Food Recipes,
Provincetown, 1941

Also see pages 46-47.

MARBLEHEAD

In 1750, Captain Francis Goelet claimed that Marblehead, Massachusetts, was famous for its large, well-fed children who, he said, were “the biggest in North America.” According to Goelet, “the chief cause is attributed to their feeding on cod’s head which is their principal diet.”

CAPE COD KIDS DON’T USE NO SLEDS,
HAUL AWAY, HEAVE AWAY,
THEY SLIDE DOWN HILLS ON CODFISH HEADS.

—Sea shanty

ICELANDIC WISDOM

Until this century, the dried heads were carried inland by pony, with racks mounting sixty heads sticking out of either side. Both Norwegians and Icelanders pick them apart for snacks. “You know,” said Reykjavik chef Úlfar Eysteinsson, “you just sit around the table talking and crr-r-ack”—he made a motion as though pulling apart a cod head.

In 1914, the entire practice of eating cod head was denounced by the prominent Icelandic banker Tryggvi Gunnarsson for that greatest of Nordic sins, impracticality. He said the food value was not worth the cost of production, and he demonstrated this in a mathematical formula that even calculated eating time. The director of the National Library responded with a treatise on the social values of eating cod head. Among other virtues, he claimed it taught forbearance, and he repeated the old Icelandic belief that eating animal heads increases intelligence. (Icelanders also eat sheep heads.)

Younger generations in Iceland don’t eat dried cod head or sheep head very much, and there has not been a verifiable decline in intelligence.

THE ISLAND HEAD

In much of the salt cod-eating world, there are myths about cod heads because the head is rarely seen. According to a medieval Catalan legend, the cod’s head is removed to conceal the fact that it is human. Though salt cod is a regular part of the Caribbean diet, few Caribbeans have ever seen a cod head. Carmelite Martial, a popular Creole cook in Guadeloupe who was born in 1919, said she never saw one. But her grandmother, who was born in 1871, had told Carmelite that she had a cod head locked away in a strongbox. What is more, the head had hair on it. “I never saw it,” said Martial, who does not include cod head in her extensive cod repertoire.

SPARE PARTS

TWO WIZENED LITTLE BOYS, LOOKING MORE LIKE TINY OLD MEN, APPEARED WITH TIN CANS. THEY HAD ON KNEE BOOTS AND WADED AROUND ON THE EDGE OF THE WATER AMONG THE FISH HEADS. EACH HAD A POCKET KNIFE AND WHEN HE FOUND A HEAD OF HIS LIKING HE CUT A THREE CORNERED SLIT UNDER THE JAW AND TOOK OUT THE TONGUE. WHEN HE HAD HIS PAIL FULL HE DUMPED THE TONGUES OUT ON AN EMPTY TABLE AND FILLED HIS CAN WITH CLEAN SEA WATER. THEN HE WASHED THE PILE AND REPLACED THE TONGUES IN THE CAN....

... WE WATCHED THE CLEANING OF THE FISH EVERY DAY FOR A WEEK AND NEVER FOUND OUR TASTE FOR COD ON THE DINNER MENU AT ALL IMPAIRED, BUT WHENEVER THE CARD SAID “BROILED CODS’ TONGUES,” TWO THIN, WAN FACES AND LITTLE BODIES STOOPED OVER A PILE OF CODS’ HEADS APPEARED BEFORE US AND WE KNEW THAT WE COULD NOT POSSI- BLY ORDER TONGUES.

—Doris Montgomery,
The Gaspé Coast in Focus, 1940

Once the meat, the head, and the liver have been eaten, is the rest ready to be ground into fish meal? From the rickety fishing villages of the Newfoundland and Labrador coasts, to rugged New England communities, to the fishermen’s families of Brittany and Normandy, to the Basque women who washed salt cod for slave wages, to the pre-twentieth-century Icelanders who had almost nothing, come the following recipes, most of them delicacies today, although they originated with the poor.

Tongues and Checks

The scallop-sized, or sometimes even larger, disk of flesh on each side of the head is the most delicate meat on the cod. It is often served with “tongues,” the throats, which have a richer taste and more gelatinous texture.

Cod tongues and cheeks, [are] rolled in corn meal, fried until brown. The tongue is not really the tongue, but the blob of meat at its base.

Pork chop is a cheek cut off with a piece ofjaw bone and fried.

—compiled by Harriet Adams, comments by N. M. Halper,
Vittles for the Captain: Cape Cod Sea-Food Recipes,
Provincetown, 1941

STEWED CODFISH TONGUES

1 lb. fresh codfish tongues
1 large onion
½ lb. clear pork fat
salt
pepper

Place pork in fry pan and let cook until brown, add onion then tongues which have been cleaned well. Add salt and pepper to taste. Simmer about ½ hour.

—compiled by the Ingonish Women’s Hospital Auxiliary,
From the Highlands and the Sea,
Ingonish, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, 1974

THE BASQUE TONGUE: KOKOTCHAS DE BACALAO VERDE

Basques are passionate about fish tongues, both salt cod and fresh hake. They use the Basque word kokotxas (pronounced cocoachas, it was sometimes spelled phonetically before modem Basque was established) and commonly prepare dozens of recipes. This is the best-known classic. The oil would always be olive oil.

Ingredients: 100 grams of salt cod tongues, garlic according to taste, parsley (the more the better), small onion, oil, milk

Preparation: Soak the tongues for 24 hours, changing the water three times a day. Then pour out the water and drain them. Put in a casserole with oil, garlic according to taste, parsley and a little onion. Let them brown a little and then add the tongues. Give them a turn and turn off the heat and leave it ten minutes. Then put it back on a very slow heat and add three spoonfuls of milk. From time to time lightly stir the casserole and when you see that it is done, remove from the heat, and it is ready to be served.

—El Bacalao, the recipes of PYSBE (Salt Cod Fishermen
and Driers of Spain), San Sebastián, 1936

Cod Roe FED TO FRENCHMEN OR TO FISH

Roes of Cod well salted and Pickled are here neglected but are said to yield a good price in France to make Sawce withall.

When the same are to be used, bruise them betwixt two trenchers, and beat them up with vinegar, White Wine etc. then let them stew or simmer over a gentle fire, with Anchovies and other Ingredients used for Sawce, puting the Butter well beat up thereto: We our selves on the Coasts use the Roes of Fresh Cod for Sawce.

-John Collins,
Salt and Fishery, 1682

OR TO BRITISH SEAMEN ...

Boil as directed (to every gallon of water add I gill of vinegar and 2 oz salt. Bring to a boil, put in the [roe], draw to the side of the fire and simmer gently till the fish is cooked.) and serve with parsley or caper sauce, or coat with egg or batter and breadcrumbs, and fry. Serve with quarters of lemon or anchovy sauce.

—C. H. Atkinson,
The Nautical Cookery Book for the Use of
Stewards & Cooks of Cargo Vessels,
Glasgow, 1941

FOR LENT IN GREECE: TARAMOSALATA

Throughout the Christian Mediterranean, salt cod has remained a Lenten tradition. In Greece, Taramosalata is served during lent. Since roe must be quickly eaten unless salted or smoked, it is generally a delicacy of northern nations. Taramosaláta was originally made from the roe of the golden gray mullet, which is native to the Mediterranean. But as Mediterranean fisheries declined, the Greeks started importing Norwegian cured cod roe, which they called taramá.

I50 grams taramá (salted cod roe)
1 medium onion, grated or finely chopped
1 slice (5-6 cm thick) stale bread^*
1 boiled potato^* .
juice of 1-2 lemons
1 cup olive oil

Remove crusts from the bread, soak it and squeeze dry. Rinse taramá in water in a fine-meshed strainer to remove some of the salt.

Pound the onion to a pulp in a mortar (goudi) if you have one, then the bread and potato, then the oil and lemon juice, alternately, pounding or beating till smooth, or put it all in an electric blender. Spoon a little oil over the surface and garnish with olives.

Some roe has a richer colour than others; one can cheat and add a little beetroot juice to improve the pale variety which in fact is of a finer quality.

Only bread or only potatoes can be used, but the combination makes a good texture. Whole wheat bread gives a better favour.

—Anne Yannoulis,
Greek Calendar Cookbook, Athens, 1988

Cod-sounds TO BROIL COD-SOUNDS

Clean and scald them with very hot water, and .rub them with salt. Take off the sloughy coat, parboil them, then flour and broil til done. Dish them, and pour a sauce made of browned gravy, pepper, cayenne, salt, a little butter kneaded in browned flour, a tea-spoonful of made mustard, and one of soy. Cod-sounds are dressed as ragout, by boiling as above (boil slowly in plenty of water, with a handful of salt) and stewing in clear gravy, adding a little cream and butter kneaded in flour, with a seasoning of lemon-peel, nutmeg and mace. Cut them in fillets. They may be fried.

—Margaret Dods,
Cook and Housewife’s Manual, London, 1829

Also see page 190.

Tripe

Stomachs are used as sausage casing. In Iceland, according to Hallfredur Örn Eiriksson, a folk customs scholar at the Árni Magnússon Institute, they are “cleaned thoroughly, stuffed with liver, which was sometimes kneaded with rye and then boiled and eaten. The same was sometimes done with sounds.”

The tripe, the stomach lining, is also sometimes used. In 1571, a reception was given in Paris for Elizabeth of Austria. On the menu was Cod Tripe.

HAKE AND SQUID WITH COD TRIPE CATALAN STYLE

Ingredients for four servings: 4 choice center cut pieces of hake, 2 squids of 30 grams each after cleaning, 100 grams cod tripes, beef stock, 100 grams spinach, I spoonful of Corinth raisins, 1 spoonful of pine nuts, white beans, a sprig of chervil, 1 shallot, butter, virgin olive oil, red wine, salt and pepper.

Soak the beans, the raisins and the tripe the night before, each one separately.

Scale the hake but keep the skin on and wash it. Clean the squid and remove the tentacles. Cook the beans in water over a low heat. Poach the tripe, saving the cooking water.

Cut the squid into julienne strips; saute in olive oil. Put a pan on medium heat with butter and cook the minced shallot. When it is soft, add red wine that has already been reduced. Then add the beans and the tripe, diced, then a little beef stock, and bring to a boil. Bind it with butter, salt and pepper.

Season the hake and put it in a pan with the skin side oiled.

Quickly saute the spinach, previously washed, and add pine nuts and raisins.

Make a bed of beans on each plate, add a spoonful of tripe, some sauce and the squid. On top of this, place the hake, skin side up. Decorate the edges with beans, spinach, pine nuts and raisins. Place a sprig of chervil on top of the fish.

—El Raco de con Fabes restaurant,
Barcelona, from Rafael Garcia Santos,
El Bacalao en la cocina Vasca y las mejores recetas del mundo
(Salt Cod in Basque cooking and the
best recipes of the world), 1996

Down to Skin and Bones

Before Iceland was modernized, cod skin was roasted and served to children with butter. Hallfredur Eiriksson recalled from his childhood: “The skin is always pulled off the dried fish before it is eaten; the dry skin is tough but becomes soft and edible when roasted over the open fire.”

Cod bones (as well as sheep and cattle bones) were prepared as follows:

[The bones] are put in sour whey where they lie until they are partly disintegrated and soft and then the whole thing is boiled slowly until the bones are tender and the mixture curds like thick porridge.

—Andrea Nikólína Jónsdóttir, Ný matreidslubók, 1858

CHOWDER

The word comes from the French chaudière, which was a large iron pot. Today the pots are often aluminum but are still standard equipment on fishing vessels, used for a simple warm, one-pot dish of fresh fish and ship’s provisions. Most North Atlantic fishing communities make some variety of chowder. A sixteenth-century recipe for chowder was written in the Celtic language of Cornwall. The Cornish word for fishmonger, jowter, leads some historians to argue that chowder is of Cornish origin. It is frequently said that the French and English fishermen on the Grand Banks introduced chowder to Newfoundland cuisine and that from there it traveled south to Nova Scotia and New England. But Native Americans in these regions were already making fish chowder, though without the pork, when the Europeans arrived.

The original ingredients were salt pork, sea biscuit, and either fresh or salt cod, all carefully layered in the pot. These ingredients are standard long-conservation provisions of a fishing ship. Sea biscuits or hardtack, which later developed specific names for different shapes and sizes, such as pilot bread or Cross Crackers, were the forerunner of the cracker—a bread too hard to go stale. Potatoes were added to chowder recipes later. Newfoundland’s Fishermen’s Brewis is a classic chowder, but with the liquid cooked away. (See page 11.)

BUT PLEASE...

NOWADAYS, ALL TOO FREQUENTLY IT [CHOWDER] COMES TO THE TABLE IN A THIMBLE. YOU MEASURE IT OUT WITH AN EYEDROPPER. YET, IN ITS DAY, A CHOWDER WAS THE CHIEF DISH AT A MEAL. THOUGH IT HAS FALLEN FROM THIS PROUD ESTATE, IT IS NOT, NOT, ONE OF THOSE FINE, THIN FUGITIVE SOUPS THAT YOU DELICATELY TOY WITH IN A GENTEEL LADY’S TEA-ROOM.... AND P.S.—PLEASE DON T SERVE IT IN A CUP.

—compiled by Harriet Adams, comments by N. M. Halper,
Vittles for the Captain: Cape Cod Sea-Food Recipes,
Provincetown, 1941

ADD WHAT YOU LIKE

Four pounds of fish are enough to make a chowder for four or five people; half a dozen slices of salt pork in the bottom of the pot; hang it high, so that the pork may not burn; take it out when done very high brown; put in a layer of fish, cut in lengthwise slices, then a layer formed of crackers, small or sliced onions, and potatoes sliced as thin as a four pence, mixed with pieces of pork you have fried; then a layer of fish again, and so on. Six crackers are enough. Strew a little salt and pepper over each layer; over the whole pour a bowl-full of flour and water, enough to come up even with the surface of what you have in the pot. A sliced lemon adds to the flavor. A cup of tomato catsup is very excellent. Some people put in beer. A few clams are a pleasant addition. It should be covered so as not to let a particle of steam escape, if possible. Do not open it, except when nearly done, to taste if it be well seasoned.

—Lydia Maria Child,
The American Frugal Housewife,
Boston, 1829

In nineteenth-century New England, chowder parties became fashionable. A dozen or more people would go for a morning sail and then prepare the chowder either on board or later, on the beach. Also at this time, adding milk to chowder came into fashion, which meant that a chowder then required more than basic seagoing provisions. (See page 76.)

FISH CHOWDER: A NEW APPROACH

Fannie Merritt Farmer, an enormously influential cookbook writer, believed in extremely precise instructions and popularized the idea of exact measurements for recipes, an illusion of science that has become standard practice and, for more than 100 years, has left household cooks saying, “What went wrong? I followed the recipe.” She was the most famous director of the Boston Cooking School, founded a generation earlier to teach working-class women how to cook “scientifically.” Influenced by this school, freedom of choice has slowly been exorcised from recipes, and experimenting is increasingly discouraged.

Fannie Farmer’s chowder recipe differs greatly from previous ones not only in its precise measurements but in that it is not made in one pot and completely abandons the idea of building a chowder in layers. The following recipe is clearly designed with a stove in mind, using several pots and even more than one burner at a time. When stoves replaced hearths, the way people cooked changed.

4 lb. cod or haddock.
6 cups potatoes cut in ¼ inch slices, or
4 cups potatoes cut in ¾ inch cubes.
1 sliced onion.
1½ inch cube fat salt pork.
1 tablespoon salt.
⅛ teaspoon pepper.
3 tablespoons butter.
4 cups scalded milk.
8 common crackers.

Order the fish skinned, but head and tails left on. Cut off head and tails and remove fish from backbone. Cut fish in two-inch pieces and set aside. Put head, tail and backbone broken in pieces, in stewpan; add two cups cold water and bring slowly to a boiling point; cook twenty minutes. Cut salt pork in small pieces and try out, add onion, and fry five minutes; strain fat into stewpan. Parboil potatoes five minutes in boiling water to cover; drain, and add potatoes to fat; then add two cups boiling water and cook five minutes. Add liquor drained from bones and fish; cover, and simmer ten minutes. Add milk, salt, pepper, butter and crackers, split and soaked in enough cold milk to moisten. Pilot bread is sometimes used in place of common crackers.

—Fannie Merritt Farmer,
The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, 1896

THE LAST TERRE-NEUVAS

In the French Channel ports, the men who fished Newfoundland were called the Terre-Neuvas. The last of them left from the Breton port of St.-Malo and the Norman port of Fecamp in the 1970s. In the campaign of 1961, the year after the following book was published, 22,000 tons of Grand Banks salt cod were still landed in Fécamp. The original French word for chowder, la chaudrée, has vanished, and here, the Marseillaise word is used for the soup.

FÉCAMP BOUILLABAISSE

Preparation: 30 minutes

Ingredients: 500 gr. of salt cod, 750 gr. of potatoes, 100 gr. of onion, a few branches of celery, 1 white of a leek, 2 cloves of garlic, 2 table spoons of tomato paste, 3 table spoons of oil, 1 bouquet garni, salt, pepper, chopped parsley.

Desalinate, poach and drain the salt cod, heat the oil in a pot. Toss in the chopped onion, the leek and the celery, also chopped. Let it cook for ten minutes. Peel the potatoes, cut them in thick rounds and cook them in the above preparation. When the potatoes are almost cooked, add the salt cod. Let it simmer slowly for ten minutes. Serve very hot, sprinkle with chopped parsley. Optional: add a little crème fraîche at the time of serving.

This recipe won the prix Terre-Neuve.

—Committee for Study and Information for the
Development of Salt Cod Consumption,
Salt Cod: The Fish, Its Preparation, Its Nutritional,
Culinary, and Economic Qualities, Paris, 1960

THE DIASPORA OF THE WEST INDIA CURE

WEST AFRICA: STOCKFISH AND EGUZI

The slave trade left West Africa with a taste for cured cod, though to most West Africans, all that remains is a tradition of salting and drying local fish. Some West African towns, such as Kaolack, Senegal, offer a sight that has vanished from Gloucester and Petty Harbour—a shore covered with miles of fish flakes. Kaolack is inland but near the coast on the Saloum River and serves as a jumping-off spot for the headwaters of the Niger, a major artery of regional trade which moves this saltfish through the sub-Sahara and Sahara. But Nigeria has hard currency from oil and can import cod. Nigerians, especially Ibos, love dried cod, which they too call stockfish. This recipe comes from an Ibo who was born in the town of Bende near the Delta, and who now lives in the United States.

Wash the.stockfish in hot water and soak it five minutes. Then boil it for several hours until it is soft. Then add goat meat. When the goat meat is cooked add eguzi [seeds of the green squash known in Nigeria as melon]. Add onions and minced ukazi [an herbal leaf]. Add crayfish. Then stir in ugbo [a thickener made from ground seeds, which have been cooked for hours until soft].

—Joy Okori, Washington, D.C., 1997

BRAZIL: BACALHUA COM LEITE DE COCO

1 pound saltcod
1 freshly-grated coconut
4 tablespoons butter or oil
2 chopped onions
2 chopped tomatoes
2 or 3 drops hot pepper sauce
1 tablespoon dendê oil [a palm oil from Bahia]

Desalinate salt cod. Remove thick milk from coconut and reserve. To the residue add 2 cups hot water and remove thinned milk by pressing through a sieve. Fry saltcod in butter or oil with the onions and tomatoes and wet with the thin milk of the coconut. Cook over a low flame, occasionally stirring. When ready to serve, shake the pepper sauce on the fish, add the dendê oil and the thick coconut milk.

—Rosa Maria, A Arte de Comer Bem, Rio de Janeiro, 1985

.JAMAICA: CODFISH RUN DOWN

Today, “Run Down” is usually prepared with dark, oily, local fish. But the old-fashioned way was with salt cod. Alphanso McLean makes it for friends, though it is considered “too country” to be served at his place of business.

Grate coconut and let it sit in water. Force it through a strainer. Boil the strained liquid and keep stirring until oil comes to top. Add saltfish, onions, tomato and serve with yellow yam and green banana.

—Alphanso McLean, chef, Terra Nova Hotel, Kingston, 1996

Jamaica: ACKEE AND SALTFISH

ELENA RASHLY ASKED VIOLET TO GIVE US A NATIVE DISH. SHE PRODUCED WHAT IS CALLED “SALTFISH AND ACKEE”—WHICH I AFTERWARDS FOUND DESCRIBED AS A DISH HIGHLY ESTEEMED BY THE NATIVES BUT LESS BY OTHER PEOPLE.

—Edmund Wilson, The Sixties, 1993

It seems that much of Wilson’s grumpiness on the subject stems from the fact that he got ackee poisoning. “I don’t remember ever suffering in such a peculiar way as this,” he wrote. Ackee is a West African fruit brought to Jamaica in 1793 by the infamous Captain Bligh, for whom it is named in botany —Blighia sapida. Like its namesake, ackee requires careful handling. The fruit, which hangs flame red from trees in the mountainous Jamaican countryside, must be fully ripe—that is, bursting open—to be safe.

Ackee and Saltfish is regarded by Jamaicans as their national dish, but the saltfish is now so expensive that Jamaicans joke that it is their “international dish”—only the tourists can afford it. Terra Nova Hotel chef Alphanso McLean serves Jamaican breakfast (Ackee and Saltfish with fried biscuits) on the wide and breezy hotel veranda, not so much to tourists, who seldom go to Kingston, as to affluent Jamaican businessmen and politicians. The fried biscuits are called johnnycakes and are the same biscuits served for breakfast with Jamaican molasses in the other Terranova, Newfoundland. Originally from southeastern New England, they were made from cornmeal and molasses, baked with pork dripping, and called jonny cakes, the name coming from “journey cakes” because they were taken on the road. They have followed the molasses-and-salt-cod route.

Caribbean saltfish dishes always involve shredding the fish, because it is of low quality. The saltfish, barely soaked, is hard and salty. The dishes depend on this for flavor.

Soak ¼ pound salt cod for 20 minutes. Boil it for 10 minutes. Boil fruit from 1 dozen fresh ackee 5 minutes. Heat vegetable oil in a skillet. In the countryside we always used coconut oil, but here I use soy. Add chopped onions, scallion, thyme, and ground black pepper. That ground pepper gives it a nice flavor. Then add minced pepper [hot scotch bonnet pepper]. Add ackee and crumbled saltfish.

—Alphanso McLean, Terra Nova Hotel, Kingston

PUERTO RICO: SERENATA DE BACALAO

In San Juan, Puerto Rico, La Casita Blanca is just that—a one-story white building, a neighborhood bar built in 1922, which Jesus Perez took over in 1985. It is in Barrio Obrero, a neighborhood that many people do not want to go to after dark. But with its low one- and two-story houses in turquoise and salmon it is also one of the old areas of San Juan not yet overtaken by high-rise architecture.

Perez remembers that his family always made bacalao with roots, yams, breadfruit, yucca. “They ate it like this much more than with rice. My mother always bought whole fish hard and flat. Now I buy fillets. They are soft. They’re salted but not dried.” Drying makes the product more expensive, and since refrigeration is now widespread on the island, Puerto Ricans, and many other people throughout the developed world, cut costs by buying green cod. One salt cod dish from his childhood that has remained popular is Serenata. In St. Lucia this is called Brule Jol; in Trinidad Buljol; in Haiti, Guadeloupe, and Martinique Chiquetaille,

2 cups salt cod, desalinated, cleaned,
shredded, and boiled
1 large onion, sliced
1 garlic clove, minced
2 hot green peppers
½ cup stuffed olives
4 hardboiled eggs, sliced
2 boiled potatoes, peeled and diced
1 cup olive oil

Mix it well and serve with salt and pepper to taste.

—Jesus Perez, La Casita Blanca, San Juan, 1996

Also see page 91.

GUADELOUPE: FEROCE

Carmelite Martial, when asked what her favorite saltfish dish was, replied, “Well, since I don’t really like saltfish, maybe a little feroce. I like avocados.”

Mix avocado, kassav (cassava flour), grilled salt cod, a little hot pepper, and sunflower seed oil. Work them together with a spatula. Some people add cucumber, but it is not essential.

—Carmelite Martial, Le Table Creole, St. Felix, Guadeloupe

THE GREAT FRENCH DISGUISE

TE CONOZCO, BACALAO
AUNQUE VENGAS DESFRAZAO
(I would know you, salt cod
Even if you were wearing a disguise)

—Cuban proverb

Since at least the time of Taillevent, salt cod has always been embellished with richness because it is harsh. Butter, olive oil, cream have been used—Icelanders pour the rendered fat of lamb kidneys over it. In 1654, Louis de Bechamel, marquis de Nointel, financier in the court of Louis XIV, having invested huge sums in the Newfoundland fishery, and finding the market weak in France because Frenchmen did not like this dried and salted old fish, invented a sauce for it, which is now called bechamel sauce. The. sauce enjoyed tremendous popularity with salt cod and many other dishes. Originally it was a simple cream sauce with spices such as nutmeg. Later it was enriched with eggs:

SALT FISH WITH CREAM

Take good barrel-cod, and boil it; then take it all into flakes, and put it in a sauce-pan with cream, and season it with a little pepper; put in a handful of parsley scalded, and minced, and stove it gently till tender, and then shake it together with some thick butter and the yolks of two or three eggs, and dish it, and garnish with poached eggs and lemon sliced.

—Charles Carter,
The Compleat Practical Cook, London, 1730

Still later, flour was added. The sauce reached its height of complexity in the early twentieth century with Auguste Escof fier’s elaborate 1921 recipe, which included chunks of veal. But a simpler flour-and-cream béchamel has remained a standard salt cod sauce in Portugal, Spain, Italy, New England (creamed codfish)—wherever salt cod is eaten.

BALLS

There is no single dish more common to all cod-eating cultures than the codfish ball. At the end of the nineteenth century, while the U.S. Senate debated a proposed pure food act, Senator George Frisbie Hoare, occupying the same august seat from which Daniel Webster had once extolled the virtues of chowder, rose and delivered a lengthy oration on “the exquisite flavor of the codfish, salted, made into balls, and eaten on a Sunday morning.”

NEW ENGLAND: BETTER START ON SATURDAY

Salt fish mashed with potatoes, with good butter or pork scraps to moisten it, is nicer the second day than it was the first. The fish should be minced very fine while it is warm. After it has gotten cold and dry it is difficult to do it nicely. There is no way of preparing salt fish for breakfast, so nice as to roll it up in little balls, after it is mixed with mashed potatoes dip it into an egg and fry it golden brown.

—Lydia Maria Child,
The American Frugal Housewife, Boston, 1829

FRANCE: MORUE EN CROQUETTES

The book in which this recipe appears was a ubiquitous classic in early-twentieth-century French households.

When your salt cod is cooked, as directed above (put the salt cod in cold water and cook. Remove from heat the moment it is about to boil, skim it and cover), remove the skin and the bones and prepare a béchamel sauce, which you mix with the salt cod, then let it chill; it must be cold enough so that your salt cod can be rolled into balls; to do that the sauce must be thick.

Prepare a dozen balls and roll them in fine bread crumbs, then dip them in beaten eggs, bread them a second time and put them in a very hot fryer. When they are a handsome color, remove them, stack them in a pyramid and sprinkle them with chopped parsley.

—Tante Marie, La Véritable Cuisine de Famille, Paris, 1925

ITALY: SALTED COD CROQUETTES

The Italian Tante Marie was Ada Boni, editor of Italy’s leading women’s magazine, Preziosa. Her cookbook first came out in 1928. This recipe is from the fifteenth edition, translated by Mathilde La Rosa.

1½ pounds soaked baccalà
3 anchovy filets, chopped
1 tablespoon chopped parsley
½ tablespoon pepper
1 tablespoon grated parmesan cheese
2 slices white bread, soaked in water and squeezed dry
2 eggs lightly beaten
½ cup flour
1 egg, lightly beaten

Boil fish in water 30 minutes and cool. Bone skin and chop fine. Add anchovies, parsley, pepper, cheese, bread and eggs and mix very well. Shape into croquettes, roll in flour, dip into egg, roll in bread crumbs and fry in olive oil until brown all over. Frying time will be about four minutes on each side. Serves 4.

—Ada Boni, Talismano della Felícità, 1950

PORTUGAL: SONHOS DE BACALHAU

1 cup shredded salted codfish
1 cup flour
1 cup water
1 tablespoon butter
salt and pepper to taste
3 eggs

Soak two pieces of salt dry codfish overnight. Save water. Shred fish with your fingers in very fine pieces. Measure water that you saved and bring to boil with fish, add butter and pepper, pour flour in and stir quickly until dough pulls from the side of the pan. Remove from heat and cool. Add eggs, one at a time, mix well. Fry in a deep skillet with plenty of hot oil, by dropping small spoonfuls in. Fry until golden brown. Makes about 20 to 24;

—Deotinda Maria Avila,
Foods of the Azores Islands, 1977

JAMAICA: STOMP AND Go

Mix 1 pound flour with water until it is thin.
Add ¼ pound soaked boiled and crumbled saltfish.
Beat in 2 eggs.
Add a little baking powder, sauted onions, scallion,
thyme.
Mix together.
Drop spoonfuls in hot oil.

-Alphanso McLean, Terra Nova Hotel, Kingston

PUERTO RICO : BACALAITOS

Pupa is the popular nickname for Providencia Trabal, who is passionate about all Puerto Rican subjects. She used to demonstrate traditional Puerto Rican cooking on television. Now she cooks for relatives in the narrow high-ceilinged kitchen of her San Juan apartment. This is how she makes Bacalaitos.

About 2 cups wheat flour
1 or 2 spoonfuls of baking soda
Add to the last water from soaking the salt cod.
Work into a thick batter.
½ pound already boiled salt cod crumbled in
Add a spoonful of garlic chopped with oregano
Add 2 spoonfuls finely chopped onions
Add 2 spoonfuls finely chopped tomato
Add chopped coriander leaf and culantro (local herb)
Fry in hot corn oil dropping in a spoonful at a time from
a ladle.

—Providencia Trabal, San Juan, 1996

“Aye, Que Bonita!” she exclaimed, and they are beautiful: two-inch amber puffs with the red and green of the herbs and vegetables brightened from quick cooking.

BRANDADE

Some believe brandade de morue began in Nimes, but it is more commonly associated with Provence. It was originally called branlade, meaning “something that is pummeled,” which it is. The dish had made it to Paris by the time of the French Revolution and never left. In 1894, writer Alphonse Daudet started a circle that met at the Café Voltaire on Place de l‘Odéon for a regular diner de la brandade.

Since salt cod has become expensive, potatoes have been added—brandade de morue parmentier. Antoine-Auguste Parmentier was an eighteenth-century officer who popularized the potato in the French Army, and his name has ever since meant “with potatoes.” In 1886, brandade was decreed an official part of the enlisted man’s mess in the French Army. As the price of salt cod has risen, so has the amount of potatoes in the brandade. Sometimes the dish simply seems like fishy mashed potatoes. As American Sara Josepha Hale wrote in her 1841 book, The Good Housekeeper, “The salted codfish is cheap food, if potatoes are used freely with it.” The original brandade had no potatoes.

The following recipe, by the great nineteenth-century Provençal chef J.-B. Reboul, is especially flavorful because of the use of the skin.

MORUE EN BRANDADE

Use good salt cod, not too soaked and well scaled, cook as above (soaked 12 hours in fresh water, scaled and cut in squares. Put in a pot covered in cold water, put on the heat until a foam rises to the surface and skim it off), drain it. Carefully remove the bones, but leave the skin which contributes a great deal to the success of the operation. Put the well-cared-for pieces in a pot placed on a corner, so that it is gently heated with the milk in a small pot to one side and the oil in another, both moderately warm. Begin adding a spoonful of oil to the salt cod, work it strongly with a wooden spoon, crushing the piece against the sides of the pot, adding from time to time, little by little, the oil and the milk, alternating the two but always working hard with the wooden spoon. When the preparation becomes creamy, when you can no longer make out any pieces, the brandade is finished.

—J.-B. Reboul,
La Cuisinière Provençale, Marseille, 1910

The author goes on to suggest that truffles, lemon juice, white pepper, grated nutmeg, or garlic can be added and concludes by warning: “If we were health advisers, we might counsel you to use this dish in moderation.”

THE FISH THAT SPOKE BASQUE

The most highly developed salt cod cuisine in the world is that of the Spanish Basque provinces. Until the nineteenth century, salt cod was exclusively food of the poor, usually broken up in stews. In PYSBE’s 1936 collection of salt cod recipes, the largest section is devoted to stews. Few of these old-style salt cod dishes can still be found in the restaurants of the Basque provinces, but they are still made at home from the least expensive cut of bacalao: desmigado (trimmings). The most expensive cuts are tongues and lomo, the choice center cut of a fillet from high up near the head, cut from a larger cod.

WITH CIDER

A salt cod omelette and chuleta-a shell steak, coated in salt and then grilled—are the two specialties of Basque cider mills. In both cases, the idea is to serve something salty to induce thirst. In San Sebastián’s province of Guizpúzcoa, cider mills, sidrerias, are open only from January to April, during which time they try to lure as many people as possible to their tasting rooms so that they will have customers after the barrel-fermented cider is bottled in April. Customers are served food while standing at tall tables. Then, thirsty from the salt, they wander to the tasting room, sample, wander back and eat a little more, then taste some more. The cider room has barrels ten feet high. A hole is tapped, and customers stand in the middle of the room and catch the cider in large, straight-sided glasses, as it spouts from the hole. The glasses should be held vertically so that the cider hits the far side, not the bottom, creating a slight head as the taster walks his glass toward the barrel and then lifts it away, freeing the spout to land in the waiting glass of the next taster at the back of the room. Remarkably little cider ends up on the floor, which is probably proof of its low alcohol content.

The following recipe comes from a sidreria in a wooded mountain suburb of San Sebastián. The omelette has a wonderful salt cod taste, which is probably enhanced by using a far better cut than is traditional for this dish.

Soak the lomo for 36 hours and no longer to keep a little taste. Sauté chopped onions and a pinch of parsley in olive oil. Add the soaked and drained salt cod. Then add eggs beaten with a small amount of water. The secret is to do all this very quickly.

—Nati Sancho, cook for Sidreria Zelaia, 1996

BACALAO A LA VIZCAÍNA

In the nineteenth century, elegant salt cod dishes were created using a choice piece of lomo, always kept whole with the skin left on and served with a sauce. Three dishes became, and remain, dominant: bacalao a la Vizcaina, al pil pil, and club ranero . With their red, yellow, and orange sauces, the beauty of these dishes was part of their appeal. Like the standard repertoire of a concert violinist, all great Basque chefs must demonstrate some skill in these three dishes without taking liberties with the standard recipes. Great debates circulate over arcane issues such as the soaking of the fish. Should it be thirty-eight hours as Jenaro Pildain at Guria in Bilbao says, or forty-eight as recommended by Juan Jose Castillo at Casa Nicolas in San Sebastián? Pildain soaks it in the refrigerator. Castillo sometimes uses mineral water for soaking, claiming he detects a chlorine taste in the tap water.

Despite their elegance, these dishes used to appear in the most humble settings. Before the Spanish Civil war, a woman owned a tavern in Arakaldo, a small Basque village in Vizcaya. Typical of the inexpensive village eateries of the 1930s, the tavern in Arakaldo offered all the classic salt cod dishes to the poor people of the village. Her son worked with her and learned the repertoire. Today he is often referred to as el rey de bacalao (the king of salt cod). His famous restaurant on the main commercial street of Bilbao, Restaurante Guria, is considered the definitive place for the three classic dishes which he learned from his mother.

“Funny, it was food for poor people then. Now they are the most prestigious dishes I do,” said Pildain.

Although he offered the following recipe, he also pointed out that it takes him a year to train a new cook to do the salt cod dishes.

An 1888 Spanish book made the claim that the two Spanish dishes most known in the rest of the world were paella and bacalao a la Vizcaína. More than 100 years later, this is still true. And yet bacalao a la Vizcaína is a dish that is almost impossible to reproduce. The sauce is based on a chubby little green pepper, the choricero, which grows to about three inches in length and then turns red and is dried. Until recently, the choricero grew only in the province of Vizcaya and is still native only to northern Spain.

In the Spanish-speaking Caribbean, where Cubans and Puerto Ricans regard this dish as part of their own national cuisine, their version does not even resemble the original. Not only is the pepper not available, but the West Indies quality of salt cod can only be broken up and stewed, usually with tomatoes and potatoes.

For 6 people:

12 pieces of salt cod 200 grams each
1 liter of vizcaina sauce
4 garlic cloves
I liter of olive oil

Soak the salt cod for about 36 to 44 hours. During this time change the water every 8 hours. Taste to see if it has been long enough for the fish to be perfectly desalinated. If so, remove the salt cod from the water and drain it. Scale it well and remove bones.

Place a deep pan with oil and sliced garlic cloves on heat, remove the garlics once they are golden. Place the salt cod with the skin side up in the pan and poach for about 5 minutes. Remove the salt cod when well-cooked and pour on the vizcaina sauce.

For 1 liter of vizcaina sauce:

I kilo of red and white onions
10 meaty choricero peppers
75 grams of ham
2 parsley bunches
½ liter olive oil
1 liter beef stock
30 grams of butter
3 garlic cloves
ground white pepper
salt

Put oil with garlic on heat in an aluminum pan. Once the garlic is golden add chopped onions, ham, and parsley, cooking strongly for 5 minutes and on low heat for another 30 minutes, stirring with a skimmer to avoid sticking to the pan. Open and remove seeds from the choricero peppers and place in lukewarm water over heat. When it starts to boil add a little cold water to slow it down. Repeat this four times. Drain the peppers well and add to the already prepared mixture. Cook for 5 minutes over a low heat, take off the oil and the parsley and add the beef stock, the white pepper, and salt, letting it cook 15 minutes more. When well cooked, pass through a blender and then twice through a strainer. Put it back on the heat for 5 minutes, work in the butter, and adjust salt and pepper to make it perfect.

—Jenaro Pildain, Restaurante Guria, Bilbao, 1996

HOW TO COOK THE LAST LARGE COD

ON CHOOSING A FRESH COD: “THE HEAD SHOULD BE
LARGE; TAIL SMALL; SHOULDERS THICK; LIVER,
CREAMY WHITE; AND THE SKIN CLEAR AND SILVERY
WITH A BRONZE LIKE SHEEN.”

—British Admiralty,
Manual of Naval Cookery, 1921

Only people who have lived by the North Atlantic understand the quality of fresh cod. It does not even resemble, except maybe in color, a fresh frozen cod. Fresh cod will inconveniently fall apart in cooking, which was why Sam Lee’s New Orleans customer did not like his shipment. If it does not flake, it is not fresh. Fresh cod is “white, delicate, resilient,” according to Paris chef Alain Senderens. “It will not tolerate long cooking. If you cook it carefully, cod will flake and give off milky cooking juices.”

People who know fresh cod—from the great restaurants of France, to British working-class fish shops, to the St. John’s waterfront—all agree on three things: It should be cooked quickly and gently, it should be prepared simply, and, above all, it must be a thick piece. Only a large piece can be properly cooked. The Lyons region’s celebrated Paul Bocuse begins a simple recipe for fresh cod with potatoes and onions: “Use a piece of cod about 30 centimeters long cut from the center of the fish.” The center of the fish is the thickest part. Bocuse is talking about the choice center of a three-foot cod, which is what everyone who knows fresh cod wants. But it is getting hard to find.

Alexandre Dumas gave these tips on selecting cod: “Choose a handsome spotted cod from Ostende or the Channel.... the best have white skin and yellow spots.” He also offered the following recipe:

BREADED COD

Cut the cod in five or six pieces, marinate with salt, pepper, parsley, shallots, garlic, thyme, bay leaf, green onions, basil; all chopped, the juice of two lemons and melted butter, prepare it with the marinade and bread it and cook it in a country oven.

—Alexandre Dumas,
Le Grande Dictionnaire de cuisine, 1873 (posthumous)

COD BONDING

Wherever there are Norwegian communities, there are cod clubs. There is one in New York and four in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. The clubs are usually exclusively for men. According to Bjarne Grindem, the former Norwegian consul in Minneapolis, three of the four in the Twin Cities are all men, and the fourth is “more liberal.” Although cod clubs claim to be exclusive and applicants wait for years for a place, each club has as many as 200 members. One hundred or more men get together once a month at lunchtime, and the meal is always boiled cod and potatoes with melted butter served with aquavit and flat bread, called kavli. “Whether they get together to get together or get together to eat cod is another question, but they always get together around the cod,” said Grindem. The oldest, most exclusive of the Twin City clubs is the Norwegian Codfish Club at the Interlochen country club in Edina. While the members gave lectures on the exact way to prepare a boiled cod, never letting the water actually boil, the kitchen at the Interlochen was more prosaic: “You mix salt water and bring to a boil and put the fish in and cover and cook for half an hour. It’s a good thick fish, about a pound a person.”

THE LAST OF THE NORTHERN STOCK

Stella’s is a popular, cozy little restaurant on the St. John’s waterfront. Miraculously, one day the restaurant was able to buy enough large, thick, cod fillets from the Sentinel Fishery to put this old standard back on the menu for one night—just a teaser, reminding Newfoundlanders of what they were missing. Stella’s defies Newfoundland tradition and refuses to use pork fat, understandably regarding it as unhealthy.

PANFRIED COD

4 fresh cod fillets
2 eggs beaten with ¼ cup milk
1 cup flour mixed with 1 teaspoon paprika, ¼ teaspoon
black pepper, 1 teaspoon parsley

Dip fish in egg mixture, then in flour mixture. Have pan hot. Then fry in vegetable oil-very hot, then as soon as you put the fish in, turn it down.

—Mary Thornhill, Stella’s Restaurant, St. John‘s, 1996

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