Stockfish

So the Prior of Saint Botolph’s hobbled back again into the refectory, to preside over the stockfish and ale, which was just serving out for the friars’ breakfast.

We saw the codfish here in all the stages of preparation for the table and the market; the stockfish, dried in the open air, without salt; crapefish, salted and pressed

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, [literally] 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.