Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World

by Mark Kurlansky

  But to the commercial fisherman, there have always been five kinds of gadiform: the Atlantic cod, the haddock, the pollock, the whiting, and the hake. Increasingly, a sixth gadiform must be added to the list, the Pacific cod, Gadus macrocephalus, a smaller version of the Atlantic cod whose flesh is judged of only slightly lesser quality.

  Engraving by William Lizars from Jardine’s Naturalist’s Library, 1833.

  The Atlantic cod, however, is the largest, with the whitest meat. In the water, its five fins unfurl, giving an elegant form that is streamlined by a curving white stripe up the sides. It is also recognizable by a square rather than forked tail and a curious little appendage on the chin, which biologists think is used for feeling the ocean floor.

  The smaller haddock has a similar form but is charcoal-colored on the back where the cod is spotted browns and ambers; it also has a black spot on both sides above the pectoral fin. The stripe on a haddock is black instead of white. In New England, there is a traditional explanation for this difference. There, cod is sometimes referred to as “the sacred cod.” In truth, this is because it has earned New Englanders so many sacred dollars. But according to New England folklore, it was the fish that Christ multiplied to feed the masses. In the legend, Satan tried to do the same thing, but since his hands were burning hot, the fish wriggled away. The burn mark of Satan’s thumb and forefinger left black stripes; hence the haddock.

  This story illustrates the difference, not only in stripes but in status, between cod and haddock. British and Icelandic fishermen only reluctantly catch haddock after their cod quotas are filled, because cod always brings a better price. Yet Icelanders prefer eating haddock and rarely eat cod except dried. Asked why this is so, Reykjavik chef Úlfar Eysteinsson said, “We don’t eat money.”

  The stars are tout morue, and cod is money; haddock is simply food. The Nova Scotians, true to their name-sakes, prefer haddock, even for fish-and-chips, which would be considered a travesty in Newfoundland and virtually a fraud in the south of England. In the north of England, as in Scotland, haddock is preferred.

  In places far from the range of Atlantic cod, hake is a substitute. The rare gadiform that is found in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, hake is a popular fish, fresh and cured, off of Chile, Argentina, New Zealand, and especially South Africa. Basques, who prize salt cod above all other fish, would rather eat a fresh hake than a fresh cod, which few have ever even seen. Because hake is found in waters closer to Spain, including the Mediterranean, cod has come to mean “cured,” while hake means “fresh.” Some Basque chefs say they prefer hake tongues to cod tongues, but what they are really saying is they prefer fresh tongues to cured ones.

  Cod is the fish of choice for curing, though all of the other gadiforms are cured too, often now as a less costly substitute for cod. Salt ling is a Scottish tradition, and speldings, wind-dried whiting wetted with seawater as they dried to give a special taste, became a local specialty north of Aberdeen in the eighteenth century. At the same time, south of Aberdeen, haddocks were being dried on shore and smoked over peat and seaweed fires by the wives of the fishermen of Findon—which is the origin of the still-celebrated finnan haddie. This has achieved such status that an occasional bogus smoked cod is passed off in the United States as finnan haddie, while a salted haddock might be passed off as salt cod.

  But in spite of the occasional local preference, on the world market, cod is the prize. This was true in past centuries when it was in demand as an inexpensive, long-lasting source of nutrition, and it is true today as an increasingly expensive delicacy. Even with the Grand Banks closed, worldwide more than six million tons of gadiform fish are caught in a year, and more than half are Gadus morhua, the Atlantic cod. For fishermen, who are extremely tradition bound, there is status in fishing cod. Proud cod fishermen are indignant, or at least saddened, by the suggestion that they should switch to what they see as lesser species.

  In addition to its culinary qualities, the cod is eminently catchable. It prefers shallow water, only rarely venturing to 1,800 feet, and it is commonly found in 120 feet (twenty fathoms) or less. Cod migrate for spawning, moving into still-shallower water close to coastlines, seeking warmer spawning grounds and making it even easier to catch them.

  They break off into subgroups, which adapt to specific areas, varying in size and color, from yellow to brown to green to gray, depending on local conditions. In the dark waters off of Iceland, they are brown with yellow specks, but it takes only two days in the brightly lit tank of an aquarium in the Westman Islands, off of Iceland, for a cod to turn so pale it looks almost albino. The so-called northern stock, the cod off of Newfoundland and Labrador, are smaller for their age than the cod off of Massachusetts, where the water is warmer. Though always a cold-water fish, preferring water temperatures between thirty-four and fifty degrees, cod grows faster in the warmer waters of its range. Historically, but not in recent years because of overfishing, the cod stock off of Massachusetts was the largest and meatiest in the world.

  Cod manufacture a protein that functions like antifreeze and enables the fish to survive freezing temperatures. If hauled up by a fisherman from freezing water, which rarely happens since they are then underneath ice, the protein will stop functioning and the fish will instantly crystallize.

  Cod feed on the sea life that clusters where warm and cold currents brush each other—where the Gulf Stream passes by the Labrador current off North America, and again where it meets arctic currents off the British Isles, Scandinavia, and Russia. The Pacific cod is found off of Alaska, where the warm Japanese current touches the arctic current. In fact, the cod follow this edge of warm and cold currents so consistently that some scientists believe the shifting of weather patterns can be monitored by noting where fishermen find cod. When cold northern waters become too cold, the cod populations move south, and in warmer years they move north.

  From Newfoundland to southern New England, there is a series of shallow areas called banks, the southernmost being Georges Bank off of Massachusetts, which is larger than the state. Several large banks off of Newfoundland and Labrador are together called the Grand Banks. The largest of the Grand Banks, known as the Grand Bank, is larger than Newfoundland. These are huge shoals on the edge of the North American continental shelf. The area is rich in phytoplankton, a growth produced from the nitrates stirred up by the conflicting currents. Zooplankton, tiny sea creatures, gorge themselves on the phytoplankton. Tiny shrimplike free-floating creatures called krill eat the zooplankton. Herring and other midwater species rise to eat the krill near the surface, and seabirds dive for both the krill and the fish. Humpback whales also feed on krill. And it is this rich environment on the banks that produces cod by the millions. In the North Sea, the cod grounds are also found on banks, but the North American banks, where the waters of the Gulf of Mexico meet the arctic Greenland waters, had a greater density of cod than anything ever seen in Europe. This was the Basques’ secret.

  Still more good news for the fishermen, a female cod forty inches (102 centimeters) long can produce three million eggs in a spawning. A fish ten inches longer can produce nine million eggs. A cod may live to be twenty or even thirty years old, but it is the size more than the age that determines its fecundity. Dumas’s image of all the eggs hatching so that someone could walk across the ocean on the backs of cod is typical nineteenth-century enthusiasm about the abundance of the species. But it could never happen. In the order of nature, a cod produces such a quantity of eggs precisely because so few will reach maturity. The free-floating eggs are mostly destroyed as they are tossed around the ocean’s surface, or they are eaten by other species. After a couple of weeks, the few surviving eggs hatch and hungrily feed, first on phytoplankton and soon zooplankton and then krill. That is, if they can get to those foods before the other fish, birds, and whales. The few cod larvae that are not eaten or starved in the first three weeks will grow to about an inch and a half. The little transparent fish, called juveniles, then leave
the upper ocean and begin their life on the bottom, where they look for gravel and other rough surfaces in which to hide from their many predators, including hungry adult cod. A huge crop of eggs is necessary for a healthy class, as biologists call them, of juveniles. If each female cod in a lifetime of millions of eggs produces two juveniles that live to be sexually mature adults, the population is stable. The first year is the hardest to survive. After that, the cod has few predators and many prey. Because a cod will eat most anything, it adapts its diet to local conditions, eating mollusks in the Gulf of Maine, and herring, capelin, and squid in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The Atlantic cod is particularly resistant to parasites and diseases, far more so than haddock and whiting.

  If ever there was a fish made to endure, it is the Atlantic cod—the common fish. But it has among its predators man, an openmouthed species greedier than cod.

  THE WELL-COOKED HEAD

  Hannah Glasse’s recipes show how much has been lost from the craft of British cooking, especially the art of roasting. A century after Glasse, French food writer Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin wrote, “You may be born to cook, but you must learn to roast.”

  TO ROAST A COD’S HEAD

  Wash it very clean, and Score it with a Knife, strew a little Salt on it, and lay it in a Stew-pan before the Fire, with something behind it, that the Fire may Roast it. All the Water that comes from it the first half Hour, throw away; then throw on it a little Nutmeg, Cloves, and Mace beat fine, and Salt; flour it, and baste it with Butter. When that has lain Some time, turn it, and season, and baste the other side the same; turn it often, then baste it with butter and Crumbs of Bread. If it is a large Head, it will take four or five Hours baking; have ready some melted Butter with an Anchovy, some of the Liver of the Fish boiled and bruised fine, mix it well with the Butter, and two yolks of Eggs beat fine, and mixed with the Butter, then strain them through a Sieve, and put them into the sauce pan again, with a few Shrimps, or pickled Cockles, two Spoonfuls of Red Wine, and the Juice of a Lemon. Pour it into the Pan the head was roasted in, and stir it all together, pour it into the Saucepan, keep it stirring, and let it boil; pour into a Bason. Garnish the Head with fried Fish, Lemon, and scraped Horse-reddish. If you have a large Tin Oven it will do better.

  —Hannah Glasse,

  The Art of Cookery: Made PLAIN and EASY

  which far exceeds any Thing of the Kind ever

  yet Published BY A LADY, London, 1747

  Glasse also offered equally elaborate recipes for both boiled and baked cod head.

  Also see pages 241-44.

  3: The Cod Rush

  IF CODFISH FORSAKE US, WHAT THEN WOULD WE HOLD?

  WHAT CARRY TO BERGEN TO BARTER FOR GOLD?

  —Peter Daas, Trumpet of Nordland, Norway, 1735

  The Basque secret was out. Raimondo di Soncino, Milan’s envoy in London, had written a letter to the duke of Milan on December 18, 1497, reporting John Cabot’s return on August 6:

  The Sea there is swarming with fish which can be taken not only with the net but in baskets let down with a stone, so that it sinks in the water. I have heard this Messer Zoane state so much. These same English, his companions, say that they could bring so many fish that this Kingdom would have no further need of Iceland, from which there comes a very great quantity of the fish called stockfish.

  From this statement, historians have concluded that John Cabot’s men caught cod simply by dropping weighted baskets. There is no evidence that Cabot ever said this, nor is it known how reliable di Soncino’s source was. However, subsequent accounts do confirm that the coast of North America was churning with codfish of a size never before seen and in schools of unprecedented density, at least in recorded European history.

  When Europeans first arrived, North America had a wealth of game and fish unparalleled in Europe. Flocks of birds, notably the passenger pigeon, which is now extinct, would darken the sky for hours as they passed overhead. In 1649, Adriaen van der Donck, the colonial governor of New Amsterdam, wrote from what is now New York that nearby waters had six-foot lobsters. Even a century after Cabot, Englishmen wrote of catching five-foot codfish off Maine, and there are persistent accounts in Canada of “codfish as big as a man.” In 1838, a 180-pounder was caught on Georges Bank, and in May 1895, a six-foot cod weighing 211 pounds was hauled in on a line off the Massachusetts coast. Cabot’s men may well have been able to scoop cod out of the sea in baskets.

  Cabot, a skilled and experienced navigator, had moved to Bristol with his wife and son only two years before his 1497 voyage, frustrated by the triumphs of Columbus and dreaming of his own glory. Both Columbus and Cabot had been born in Genoa about the same year, and both had searched the Mediterranean for backers. They probably knew each other. Cabot may have even had to endure the spectacle of some of Columbus’s triumphant receptions. He seems to have been in Barcelona in April 1493, when crowds cheered his fellow Genovese formally entering the city. At last, when Cabot returned to England after his North American voyage, he basked in the same kind of reception that Columbus had enjoyed in Spain. In England, Cabot was a sensation, the man of the moment, and fans assailed him on the streets of Bristol and London the way they might today if he were a rock star. But there was little time to luxuriate in what might be only fleeting glory. After all, Columbus was about to embark on his third voyage. With his sudden fame, Cabot easily raised funding for a second voyage with five ships. One ship soon returned, and the other four, along with Cabot, were never heard from again. It was the first of many such calamities.

  The Portuguese were also exploring and charting North America. A 1502 map identifies Newfoundland as “land of the King of Portugal,” and to this day, many Portuguese consider Newfoundland to be a Portuguese “discovery.” Many of the earliest maps of Newfoundland show Portuguese names. Those names have remained, though they are no longer recognizably Portuguese. Cabo de Espera (Cape Hope), the tip of land between St. John’s and Petty Harbour, has become Cape Spear, Cabo Raso is now Cape Race, and the Isla dos Baccalhao is Baccalieu Island. In 1500, Gaspar Côrte Real went to Newfoundland and named it Greenland, Terra Verde. He was the youngest son of Joao Vaz Côrte Real, a despotic ruler of the Azores and yet another mariner who some claim went to America before Columbus. In 1501, on his second trip, after sending back fifty-seven Beothuk as sample slaves, Gaspar, like Cabot, vanished with his ship and crew. The following year, his brother Miguel was lost along with his flagship and its crew.

  This grim early record did not discourage fishermen. Fishing had opened up in Newfoundland with the enthusiasm of a gold rush. By 1508, 10 percent of the fish sold in the Portuguese ports of Douro and Minho was Newfoundland salt cod. In France, the Bretons and Normans had an advantage because the profitable markets of the day were nearby Rouen and Paris. By 1510, salt cod was a staple in Normandy’s busy Rouen market. By midcentury, 60 percent of all fish eaten in Europe was cod, and this percentage would remain stable for the next two centuries.

  The sixteenth-century Newfoundland cod trade was changing markets and building ports. La Rochelle on the French Atlantic coast had been a second-string harbor because it was not on a river, a critical flaw since goods were moved on rivers. All La Rochelle had, in addition to a well-protected harbor, was a determined Protestant merchant class that saw the commercial opportunity in Newfoundland cod. Yet La Rochelle became the premier Newfoundland fishing port of Europe. Of the 128 fishing expeditions to Newfoundland between Cabot’s first voyage and 1550, more than half were from La Rochelle.

  The French dominated these years, originating 93 of those 128 fishing expeditions to Newfoundland. The rest were divided between the English, Spanish, and Portuguese. Figures on the Basques, as is the Basque fate, are buried in French and Spanish statistics, but the French Basque ports of Bayonne and St.-Jean-de-Luz were important in the first half of the century.

  Even though Cabot had claimed North America for England, British fishermen had not immediately joined the cod rush because catches were
good in Iceland. It was cod that had first lured Englishmen from the safety of their coastline in pre-Roman times. By the early fifteenth century, two- and three-masted ketches with rudders were going to Iceland and the Faroes. Not only were these some of the best fishing vessels of the day, but not until the twentieth century would Icelanders have vessels of an equal quality for fishing their own waters.

  But the conflict between England and the Germans of the Hanseatic League over rights to Icelandic cod grew steadily worse. In 1532, an Englishman, John the Broad, was murdered in the Icelandic fishing station of Grindavik. Though Britain’s Icelandic Cod Wars are thought of as a twentieth-century phenomenon, the first one was set off by this Grindavik killing and was fought not against Iceland, which was a colonized and docile nation by then, but against the Hanseatic League, which had developed its own navy. Uncharacteristic of the British, after a brief fight they simply withdrew from the Icelandic fishery. As di Soncino had predicted, Britain didn’t need Iceland anymore.

  Detail showing Cod War of 1532 off of Grindavík from Olaus Magnus’s Carta Marina, 1539. (Uppsala University Library, Uppsala)

  With the opening up of Newfoundland, the British West country began developing major fishing ports. In the days of slow sailing, a westward location was a tremendous advantage because it reduced the length of a voyage. Except Ireland, which was too impoverished to develop a distant water fleet, the ports that remained important to the Newfoundland fishery into the mid-twentieth century—St.-Malo on the Brittany peninsula, Vigo on the northwest tip of Spain, the Portuguese ports—were those in the European regions closest to Newfoundland.