Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World

For the category Wild Animals of the 2022 NONFICTION READER CHALLENGE, I chose Cod, by Mark Kurlansky, 1999.

The sub-heading of the book attracted me. I’ve read a number of non-fiction books about an item that ‘changed the world,’ such as coal, cotton and cement. I understand there is also a book about figs that claims the same thing. For some reason, I find such minute histories to be extremely interesting. Although I felt there was not enough support for how the codfish changed the world, I learned more information about the fish and the fishing industry than I ever thought I would know.

This book was the winner of the Glenfiddich Food & Drink Awards as the Special Award Food Book 1999. I hadn’t known about that award, but it turns out that I had read one of the winning books (Toast: The story of a boy’s hunger, by Nigel Slater). However, it was discontinued in 2008. I also like reading about the history of foods, for some reason. Even if they were not claimed to have changed the world, they are interesting nevertheless. For example: olive oil (see my book review of March 08, 2021), bagels (posted on August 09, 2021), chocolate, tea, olives, bere (Orkney’s ancient grain) as well as a book with chapters about beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea, and Coca-Cola.

I have had a personal relationship to cod. I lived in Portugal for a few years and dried cod was used in so many dishes there, it was hard to keep track. It was also the dish of choice for special occasions, like Christmas dinner. Cod is not native to the Atlantic coast of Portugal, but Portuguese fishermen sailed to the eastern coast of Canada for 6 months to fish for the cod and then dried it on the ship. It amazed me that the ‘national dish’ of the country doesn’t come from that country. But it was clear that cod has had a great impact on Portugal’s economy, social life and cuisine.

Kurlansky often refers to how the cod industry had a great influence on other areas and on the business world. For example,

 “By the eighteenth century, cod had lifted New England from a distant colony of starving settlers to an international commercial power. Massachusetts had elevated cod from commodity to fetish.”

The book is organized by time periods and by locations. Part One covers the history of cod from medieval times to the American Revolution in 6 chapters. It also includes the changes of the different types of fishing vessels through time. Part Two focuses on aspects of the fish itself (how it lives, breeds and is caught), on fisheries, and how, eventually, the amount of cod available in the oceans was depleted. The final part details how the reduction of the cod-fishing industry has affected the areas of the world that were most involved in it.

In fact, the last sentence in the book is a rather depressing summation of the depletion of cod (and other fish):

“We were forced to give up commercial hunting and to raise domestic mammals for meat, preserving the wild ones as best we could. It is harder to kill off fish than mammals. But after 1,000 years of hunting the Atlantic cod, we know that it can be done.”

In all of the chapters, the information is very detailed, but the changes in the world were concentrated in a few European countries and in North America. The cod-fishing industry definitely had an impact on the economy and social life of these countries, but not on the rest of the world (except, I assume, on the availability of the product).

Kurlansky covers many ways that cod-fishing made a difference to economies, battles and history. For example, in chapter 6, A Cod War Heard ‘Round the World, he details the different measures Britain took to tax the American colonies, and they included ones on both cod fishing and on the number of fishing vessels. This added to the grievances the colonists had, but it wasn’t the only one. So it didn’t convince me that the restriction on cod fishing was a major cause of the American Revolution.

One person in the book did seem to ‘change the world,’ however. In a chapter from the section on the fish business, there is information about Clarence Birdseye, who I have read about before.

“With few people noticing, the next idea that would change North Atlantic fishing forever was being contemplated by a somewhat eccentric New Yorker, passing the winter in Labrador.”

Clarence Birdseye, the eccentric New Yorker, developed a quick-drying process – first for vegetables, then poultry, and then fish. He received the first patent on his frozen food technology. So the availability of frozen food – so common in supermarkets since then – has certainly changed the world, but it wasn’t specifically about cod.

If I ignore that the sub-title of this book is A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World, then I would say it is a very interesting history of the codfish, cod-fishing, fishing vessels, and the businesses that were created related to them. It is written in a very accessible way, sometimes reading like an adventure story. In some chapters Kurlansky included too much detail for my taste, but he has obviously done a lot of research into all the areas he has written about. The final section is a bibliography organized into the different aspects of the topic.

A very nice touch is that at the end of each chapter is a recipe from the area or time period covered in that chapter. And the final section of the book, A Cook’s Tale: Six Centuries of Cod Recipes, is a 41-page collection of further recipes.