SC - FWD: Re: salt cod

[Jack Campin by way of renfrow@skylands.net]

Saw this on rec.food.historic & thought you might be interested:

"Roots" <!!muldrew@!!nbnet.nb.ca> writes:
> Jack Campin wrote in message <3158 at purr.demon.co.uk>...
>>"Roots" <!!muldrew@!!nbnet.nb.ca> writes:
>>> Salt Cod originates in Newfoundland.
>> According to Alan Davidson salted and dried cod, known as "klippfisk" in
>> Scandinavia, was an innovation of mediaeval Europe and the economic base
>> of the Hanseatic League, which puts it a few centuries before Europe was
>> exploiting the Newfoundland fisheries.
> **Sigh**  Read the thread.  We are discussing Salt COD.   The process of
> drying and salting fish was indeed around before the European discovery of
> the Grand Banks.   The Bay of Biscayne in Northern Spain is usually
> credited.   But Cod is not native to the area and they couldn't have dried
> what they didn't have.

Cod is an oceanic fish and doesn't need an EC work permit to leave Canadian
waters.  There are (or were) undoubtedly *more* of them near Newfoundland,
but they occur all over the North Atlantic.

Maria Dembinska, "Method of meat and fish preservation in the light of
archaeological and historical sources", in _Food Conservation: ethnological
studies_, ed. Astri Riddervold & Andreas Ropeid, (Department of Ethnology,
University of Oslo), Prospect Books, London, 1988:

   ... palaeolithic drawings indicate that marine species of fish were
   eaten in regions distant from the sea; which testifies to their
   preservation before transportation.

   More proof of the necessity to preserve fish comes from the neolithic
   period (about 5000-2000 BC).  Large quantities of fishbones and scales
   of cod found in neolithic excavations indicate that periodical fishing
   activities took place, probably in winter, along the Irish and Norwegian
   coasts...  Similar fish remains have been found in neolithic excavations
   in Poland, for example in Pomerania.

The whole article is fascinating; it includes a ham-smoking recipe from
Cato the Elder's _DeRe Rustica_ of the 2nd century BC and a description
of a reconstructed fish smoking process from early mediaeval Poland, and,
in what has to be the least useful recipe ever mentioned on this group,
an account of how to salt an aurochs.  (Now where did I put that dodo
liver pate recipe?...)

> I quote from the Norweigan Fisheries website:
> "The art of drying fish was passed on by a long and tortuous path before
> it came to Norway.  The method was known in both Newfoundland and Scotland
> before it was taken up on the northwest coast of Norway.  The first
> indications of klipfish production here are dated 1640.

Northwest Norway is rather a long way from Hansa territory.  Dembinska
describes a continuous tradition of cod preservation further south; maybe
this region of Norway forgot it and had to recreate it?  (hard to imagine
how this could have happened).  Or is this describing some highly specific
modern process?

In the same collection Johanna Maria van Winter's article "The role of
preserved food in a number of mediaeval households in the Netherlands"
describes the accounts for the military campaign of the Count of Holland
against the Frisians in 1345 as listing 7342 codfish being salted for the
army, with the quantity of salt also accounted for.  The documents were
reprinted by H.G. Hamaker as _De rekeningen der grafelijkheid van Holland
onder het Henegouwsche Huis_, 2nd series nrs 21, 24, 26, Utrecht 1875/6/8,
volume II, pp.168-172.  De Winter seems to have trawled every domestic
account book surviving from the mediaeval Netherlands; her references are
awesomely thorough.

- ---> email to "jc" at the site in the header: mail to "jack" will bounce <---
Jack Campin   2 Haddington Place, Edinburgh EH7 4AE, Scotland   0131 556 5272
http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/purrhome.html  food intolerance data and recipes,
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