Salt Cod

Called baccalà in Italian, bacalao in Spanish, bacalhau in Portuguese and morue in French, dried salt cod is an ancient culinary institution. The first known written reference to it was in eleventh-century Holland, which suggests it had been around for a long time prior to that. It has been an important ingredient in Mediterranean cooking since the latter part of the fifteenth century, when the Portuguese and Spanish were first fishing on a large scale for cod over Newfoundland’s Great Banks, salting it heavily for preservation during the long voyage home.