Cod (25 page)

 

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

 

 

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

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 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.