When the Basque whalers applied to cod the salting techniques they were using on whale, they discovered a particularly good marriage because the cod is virtually without fat, and so if salted and dried well, would rarely spoil. It would outlast whale, which is red meat, and it would outlast herring, a fatty fish that became a popular salted item of the northern countries in the Middle Ages.

The medieval church imposed fast days on which sexual intercourse and the eating of flesh were forbidden, but eating "cold" foods was permitted. because fish came from water, it was deemed cold, as were waterfowl and whale, but meat was considered hot food.

Cod became almost a religious icon - a mythological crusader for Christian observance.

Cod meat has virtually no fat (.3 percent) and is more than 18 percent protein, which is unusually high even for fish. And when cod is dried, the more than 80 percent of its flesh that is water having evaporated, it becomes concentrated protein - almost 80 percent protein.

Massachusetts had elevated cod from commodity to fetish.

Since the industrial revolution, Great Britain had been developing an ever-increasing market for groundfish - especially cod, haddock, and plaice - because fried fish, later fish-and-chips, became the favorite dish of the urban working class.

By the time the war ended, Iceland was a changed country. Not least among the changes, in 1944 it had negotiated full independence from Denmark. Now it was free to negotiate its own relations with the rest of the world. Because of cod, it had moved in one generation from a fifteenth-century colonial society to a modern postwar nation.

Newfoundlanders debated over when "the cod was coming back". Few dared ask if. Or what happens to the ocean if they don't come back?

gastronomically, a wild salmon and a farmed salmon have as much in common as a side of wild boar has with pork chops.