Cod_ A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World - Mark Kurlansky [18]
The Spanish Basque city of Bilbao, with its ironworks providing the anchors and other metal fittings for Europe’s ships, was one of the ports that grew with the boom in shipbuilding created by the cod trade. According to historian Samuel Eliot Morison, at no time in history, not even during World War II, has there ever been such a demand for replacement of sunken ships as between 1530 and 1600. European ambition was simply too far ahead of technology, and until better ships and better navigation were developed, shipwrecks and disappearances were a regular part of this new adventure.
In this rapidly expanding commercial world, the British had one great disadvantage over the French, Spanish, and Portuguese: They had only a modest supply of salt. Most northern countries lacked salt and simply produced winter fish that was dried without salting. It was called stockfish, from the Dutch word stok, meaning “pole,” because the fish were tied in pairs by the tail and hung over poles to dry, as is still done out on the lava fields of Iceland every winter.
But the English wanted to produce a year-round supply of cod for a growing market, and since neither the North Sea nor Iceland was cold enough for drying fish in the summer, they became dependent on salting. Some fish were simply sold salted and undried, which became known as “green” not because of the color but because it was considered a more natural state than dried fish. But in an attempt to conserve their limited salt, the British invented a product that was to be favored in Mediterranean and Caribbean markets for centuries: a lightly salted dried cod. The Norwegians called it terranova fisk, Newfoundland fish, but later used the name klipfisk, rockfish, because it was dried on rocky coasts.
As green and salted-and-dried fish became available, they were preferred to the unsalted stockfish and brought substantially higher prices. The British experimented with new products such as a summer-cured dried cod from the Grand Banks known as Habardine or Poor John. In Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Trinculo says of Caliban, whom he finds on the beach, “He smells like a fish—a very ancient and fish-like smell—a kind of, not of the newest, poor john.”
Winter cures were known to be superior. Other variations were developed. Some fish was salted directly, and some was pickled in brine in barrels. Some of the pickled and some of the green were later dried to give them more durability. There was not only a wide choice of products in cured Newfoundland cod but also, no doubt, a great range of quality. “As to their Quality, Many of them Stink, for’tis a certain Maxim, that if Fish or Flesh be not well cured and salted first, they cannot be recovered,” John Collins, an accountant to the Royal Fishery, wrote in Salt and Fisheries.
It is not by chance that a Royal Fishery accountant was publishing a book on salt in 1682. The British fisheries had by then been wrestling with the salt problem for centuries. Collins pointed out that brackish water around England could be boiled, which yielded more salt than did evaporating seawater. He discussed the relative quality of salt and offered this recipe for one of the better English salts.
... the manner of boyling the Brine into Salt at Namptwich. They boyl it in Iron Pans, about 3 foot square, and 6 inches deep; their Fires are made of Staffordshire Pit-Coles, and one of their smaller Pans is boiled in 2 hours time.
To clarify and raise the Scum, they use Calves, Cows and Sheeps blood, which in Philosophical Transaction, No 142, is said to give the Salt an ill flavour.
Wich is an Anglo-Saxon