Cod_ A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World - Mark Kurlansky [14]
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