[Sca-cooks] Basques and the salting of cod

Stefan li Rous StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
Wed Oct 11 23:02:11 PDT 2006


Adamantius commented:
<<< What do we actually know about fish being smoked? For example, I was
pretty shocked to see Mark Kurlansky state in his book about cod,
that Basque fishermen essentially discovered the technique of salting
fish while still on board ship, thus greatly extending their travel
range -- this is another of those things that makes great common
sense, and one which you'd assume had been known since pre-history,
but Kurlansky says, as I recall, that this was first implemented in
something like the thirteenth century. >>>

Hmmm. Maybe I need to go re-read that section of his book, but what I  
remember him saying was that the Basque *couldn't* preserve their cod  
catch onboard their ships, which is part of the proof he gives for  
the Basque discovering North America before Columbus. They needed to  
land to prep the fish before the voyage home. Since both this and the  
source of the cod were considered commercial secrets, they weren't  
going to advertise their finding of the new lands to the rest of Europe.

Stefan
--------
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
    Mark S. Harris           Austin, Texas           
StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****





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