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 t
ongues. 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
Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World Page 18
