Cod’s flesh, all flakes and pale as first snow, reflects its lack of muscularity. This yielding creature is the polar opposite of the purple fighting machine that is the bluefin tuna, another modern favourite. True, cod is tough in some ways, long-lived at 20 years or so, resistant to disease and remarkably thick-skinned. But it goes limp when hooked, a trait that hasn’t historically done it any favours. A fish of frigid waters, it’s also attracted to (slightly) warmer oceanic shores when it’s time to spawn, and so practically offers itself for capture. Then again, it’s not by centuries of hauling cod into artisanal fishing boats that we came close, in some areas, to wiping it out: it was by industrially scraping the seas in a matter of decades, with our greed goggles on and our conservation compass off.
“Cod” is almost invariably taken to mean Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua), though a Pacific cousin exists. A number of other commercial species – hake and haddock, ling and pollock – count as family members (Gadidae). Some are increasingly seen as alternatives to cod, without quite matching its prestige.
When the American journalist Mark Kurlansky published Cod: A biography of the fish that changed the world in 1997, it looked as though its subject might be about to exit history. The book portrayed cod as a hinge factor in the European settlement of North America. First fished by the Basques and the Vikings 1 000 years ago, then by the Portuguese, the French and the English, cod provided both food security and handsome profits. It spurred exploration and the opening of trade routes to Newfoundland and New England; was traded for slaves in western Africa and, in turn, fed to slaves toiling on Caribbean sugar plantations; drove demand for salt, needed to preserve the fish in pre-refrigeration days; caused trade wars from the seventeenth century to the twentieth; and was ultimately, the book implies, indissociable from circumstances that brought about the US Declaration of Independence.
As with other commodity monographs – tea, tulips and suchlike – the singular focus of Cod lays it open to charges of hyperbole. But the book’s documentary value is great, as is the elegiac tone of its reportage. Its merit is, not least, exogenous: a bestseller, it rippled into a wave of popular awareness, at a time when the finite nature of the planet’s resources had yet to gel as a household concern. By the turn of the millennium, cod, with its storied past, appeared to be succumbing to the age of the super-trawler, and consumers knew it.
Politically, in fact, moves were already afoot to prevent cod’s feared extinction. In the 1980s, both Iceland and Norway had enacted drastic fishing quotas. (Skirmishes between Iceland and the United Kingdom over access to cod-rich waters had formed a political mood music for decades.) By the early 1990s, Canada’s inshore and offshore cod populations had collapsed, prompting a federal moratorium and the largest industrial closure in the country’s history. As the decade ended, Canadian cod was classified as “of special concern”.
One generation later, stocks have rebounded in the northeast Atlantic – but hardly (or very modestly) in Newfoundland, around its Grand Banks extension, in Nova Scotia or New England. In these areas, climate change seems to have compounded the legacy of overfishing, with a likely irreversible alteration of the food chain. Where cod were once top predators, their former prey, mainly crabs and other crustaceans, have proliferated and now fill that role. This does mean that those waters are economically viable once more: lobster, having migrated north, has probably never been as abundant as it is now off the US state of Maine. But the northwest Atlantic’s biodiversity has taken a battering. Maritime Canada has seen a whole fishing culture extinguished.
Today, Atlantic cod is at its most sustainable in the freezing waters of the Barents Sea. Here, Norway and the Russian Federation have been managing stocks through a joint fishery commission, setting quotas and ensuring more or less stable population levels. In the early 1990s, data exchange and compliance inspections were stepped up. At the time of writing, that said, the war in Ukraine was straining relations between Moscow and western allies: there were signs that sanctions were causing shifts in the global seafood trade. Political cooperation in the Arctic was breaking the down, leaving status of joint Norwegian-Russian cod quotas unclear. In the last year before the war, the quotas had been cut by a fifth.
All of this means that in G7 countries in particular, the availability of Russian cod may dry up. (The Russian Federation also produces Pacific cod, which it manages separately.) Sanctions aside and from a sheer environmental perspective, Norwegian or Russian cod, if reliably labelled as such, can be eaten without qualms. So can Icelandic cod, following decades of sound management.
Efforts to farm cod, once powered by extinction concerns, have proceeded fitfully. There have been minor successes, especially in Norway. But with the exception of small projects, the rebound in wild stocks has largely quashed the impetus. Commercially, cultured cod remains a marginal proposition.
Back when “zero waste” was an economic necessity for most (rather than something rich-country citizens need cajoling into for climate’s sake), every last bit of the cod was used. The flesh is extraordinarily lean and loaded with protein. Most consumers will only come across fillets these days, but the throat, known as “tongue,” was long thought a delicacy and still is in some quarters. Some of us may remember being given cod liver oil as children. In Iceland, Spain and Portugal, the liver can be seen tinned, and sometimes smoked, as can the roe. Cod bones found employment, in centuries past, as a natural fertilizer. The strong skin was processed into leather – but it’s also delicious to eat, acquiring a wonderfully glutinous texture in the frying pan. (Remember to score the skin when cooking fillets, or it will cause the flesh to curl as it loses collagen and shrinks.) How you find cod will likely depend on where you buy it. Northern European and “Anglo-Saxon” markets are partial to fresh cod, traditionally the stuff of English fish and chips (though hake, haddock and even sea bass have become popular alternatives). The Mediterranean and Caribbean markets prefer salt cod. A third option, called stockfish, is most closely associated with Norway: this is air-cured cod, without the addition of salt. Note that salt cod (baccalà, bacalao or bacalhau) must be soaked at length to rehydrate and release most of that sodium: a lot will be retained, so there’s no need to salt further. Rinse the fish well and use tweezers to remove all pin bones. Whichever way you get your cod, it will take magnificently to dairy, fats animal or vegetal, and Mediterranean herbs. In the Veneto region of Italy, baccalà mantecato sees the rehydrated fish simmered in milk with black pepper and bay leaves, then mashed and montato – thickened and made unctuous – through the gradual addition of olive oil. (In a nod to the commercial crosscurrents that put cod on European tables for centuries, this recipe, usually served with polenta, traditionally uses Norwegian-style stockfish.) Over in French Provence, brandade de morue involves similarly warming the reconstituted cod over a low flame with cream, garlic, thyme and cloves, then enriching it with olive oil and beating it with floury boiled potato. Such dishes are homemade ointments for your insides: spread them thick and let them soothe you.
Not that I’d want to turn down the honour, but that’s a selective reading of events. Let’s put it this way: I’ve played a part in northern and western Europeans’ urge to roam the north Atlantic, and then in the economic set-up of what were originally settler communities. So perhaps yes, in some small way I did have a hand – or fin, rather – in shaping the social profile of parts of North America.
It’s true that I move slowly and tend to go limp when caught. On the other hand, I’m carnivorous, and even cannibalistic on occasion: I sometimes eat codlings. Also, as a species, I have no natural predator, which is probably why I’ve never really developed a strong survival instinct. Actually, that’s not quite true. I do have one predator.
Yes, things have improved over the last couple of decades. I’d be churlish not to admit it. You finally did see the light. I don’t much see it myself, as it’s pretty dark deep down, where I live. And at those latitudes in winter, even the sky is a sea of gloom. There’s not much to do except, ahem, the obvious: no wonder that come spring, I lay up to 500 million eggs.
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