Cod by Mark Kurlansky Read Free Book Online

backs of cod is typical nineteenth-century enthusiasm about the abundance of the species. But it could never happen. In the order of nature, a cod produces such a quantity of eggs precisely because so few will reach maturity. The free-floating eggs are mostly destroyed as they are tossed around the ocean’s surface, or they are eaten by other species. After a couple of weeks, the few surviving eggs hatch and hungrily feed, first on phytoplankton and soon zooplankton and then krill. That is, if they can get to those foods before the other fish, birds, and whales. The few cod larvae that are not eaten or starved in the first three weeks will grow to about an inch and a half. The little transparent fish, called juveniles, then leave the upper ocean and begin their life on the bottom, where they look for gravel and other rough surfaces in which to hide from their many predators, including hungry adult cod. A huge crop of eggs is necessary for a healthy class, as biologists call them, of juveniles. If each female cod in a lifetime of millions of eggs produces two juveniles that live to be sexually mature adults, the population is stable. The first year is the hardest to survive. After that, the cod has few predators and many prey. Because a cod will eat most anything, it adapts its diet to local conditions, eating mollusks in the Gulf of Maine, and herring, capelin, and squid in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The Atlantic cod is particularly resistant to parasites and diseases, far more so than haddock and whiting.
    If ever there was a fish made to endure, it is the Atlantic cod—the common fish. But it has among its predators man, an openmouthed species greedier than cod.

THE WELL-COOKED HEAD
    Hannah Glasse’s recipes show how much has been lost from the craft of British cooking, especially the art of roasting. A century after Glasse, French food writer Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin wrote, “You may be born to cook, but you must learn to roast.”
    TO ROAST A COD’S HEAD
    Wash it very clean, and Score it with a Knife, strew a little Salt on it, and lay it in a Stew-pan before the Fire, with something behind it, that the Fire may Roast it. All the Water that comes from it the first half Hour, throw away; then throw on it a little Nutmeg, Cloves, and Mace beat fine, and Salt; flour it, and baste it with Butter. When that has lain Some time, turn it, and season, and baste the other side the same; turn it often, then baste it with butter and Crumbs of Bread. If it is a large Head, it will take four or five Hours baking; have ready some melted Butter with an Anchovy, some of the Liver of the Fish boiled and bruised fine, mix it well with the Butter, and two yolks of Eggs beat fine, and mixed with the Butter, then strain them through a Sieve, and put them into the sauce pan again, with a few Shrimps, or pickled Cockles, two Spoonfuls of Red Wine, and the Juice of a Lemon. Pour it into the Pan the head was roasted in, and stir it all together, pour it into the Saucepan, keep it stirring, and let it boil; pour into a Bason. Garnish the Head with fried Fish, Lemon, and scraped Horse-reddish. If you have a large Tin Oven it will do better.
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    â€”Hannah Glasse,
The Art of Cookery: Made PLAIN and EASY
which far exceeds any Thing of the Kind ever
yet Published BY A LADY, London, 1747
    Glasse also offered equally elaborate recipes for both boiled and baked cod head.
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    Also see pages 241-44.

3: The Cod Rush
    IF CODFISH FORSAKE US, WHAT THEN WOULD WE HOLD?
WHAT CARRY TO BERGEN TO BARTER FOR GOLD?
    â€”Peter Daas, Trumpet of Nordland, Norway, 1735
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    T he Basque secret was out. Raimondo di Soncino, Milan’s envoy in London, had written a letter to the duke of Milan on December 18, 1497, reporting John Cabot’s return on August 6:
    The Sea there is swarming with fish which can be taken not only with the net but in baskets let down with a stone, so that it sinks in the water. I have heard this Messer