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By Root 1077 0

EEC adjusted accordingly. Prices are at £900 per tonne, whereas two years ago they were £700 and in 1982, £300. The conclusion of the article in The Independent, from which these figures come, is that prices cannot continue to rise. With more and more farmed salmon and the lowering of salmon prices accordingly, will there be parity of esteem? Perhaps not over the whole consumer range, since the magic of the word salmon may take a year or two to dispel, but many friends I have talked to agree that they would rather eat top quality cod than some of the farmed salmon one sees around.

This rarity of the real thing has drawn attention to the lesser relations. I exclude from this category haddock (p. 148), hake and whiting (pp. 161 and 446), which have strong identities of their own. They are all fish of fine quality. Somewhat less glorious, though adequate for stocks, soups, fish pies, fish cakes possibly, fish fried in batter, and for salting, is a bevy of fish with a confused nomenclature. From the cook’s point of view, all one actually needs to know is that they are all cooked like cod, haddock and hake. Nevertheless, here is a modest attempt to disentangle some of them, with French names to help if you are catering for the family abroad and are bewildered by the much greater choice of fish in the markets:

ling (Molva molva; lingue or julienne)

coley, coalfish,

black pollack, rock (Pollachius virens; Lieu noir, colin noir)

salmon, etc.

pollack, Dover hake,

lythe, Margate hake, (Pollachius pollachius; Lieu jaune, colin jaune)

pollock, etc.

Alaska pollack or

pollock (Theragra chalcogrammus)

You will see that pollack or pollock covers at least three realities.

Having acknowledged the lesser fry, let us return to the king of the cod fishery, Gadus morhua, once the most important food fish in northern Europe. It has all the freshness and crispness of form that cold seas can give it. The English name, cod, goes back to the year dot pretty well. No etymologist can work out where it has come from. One thing is sure, it has no connection with the Greek gados from which the first element in the Latin name derives. Obeisance should be made to its majestic importance, but it should also be pointed out that – from the eater’s point of view – there is cod and cod. Go for the small inshore fish that haven’t been bruised around in ice in a ship’s hold for weeks. Official sizing this side of the Atlantic goes by length:

small codling: less than 54 cm (21½ inches)

codling: 54–63 cm (21½–25 ¼ inches)

sprag: 63–76 cm (25¼–30 inches)

cod: over 76 cm (30 inches)

This gives you some idea of what to ask for, if your fish kettle measures 60 cm (24 inches). Assuming, that is, that you want to cook it whole as they do in Norway for Christmas dinner. There you choose your fish on the quay as it swims around in the tanks. The fishmonger dispatches and cleans it, and you take it home to poach and serve with a traditional mustard or egg sauce, or with melted butter and fine grated horseradish.

Another place where small codling are given their due is Boston (Boston, Mass., not Boston, Lincs.). It appears there, and so does haddock, under the name of scrod. They measure the fish there by weight:

scrod: ¾ – 1¼ kg (1½–2½ lb), less than 50 cm (20 inches)

market: 1¼–5 kg (2½–10 lb), 50–75 cm (20–30 inches)

large: 5–12 ½ kg (10–25 lb), 75–100 cm (30–40 inches)

whole: over 12½ kg (25 lb), over 100 cm (40 inches).

People fly across the States for it, I gather. One keen traveller ran out of the airport and jumped into a cab: ‘Take me some place good where I can get scrod!’

The cab drive sat back and paused, admiringly: ‘That’s a question I’ve been asked many times. But never in the pluperfect.’

Nowadays in Boston, sadly, and in Gloucester, cod fishing is not the vast trade it once was. Down at the pierhead auction with George Berkowitz who runs five of the best fish restaurants in Boston (each with a fishmonger’s counter beside the till, so that inevitably you walk out with