LANDING HERRING AND COD. Brian Fagan traces the evolution of the fishing industry in Fish on Friday: Feasting, Fasting, and the Discovery of the New World, providing Book Review No. 21. Christian tradition provided some of the impetus for eating fish (the great expense of raising meat, which is still a rather costly way to convert grain into human food, and the short growing season also contributed) although Professor Fagan uncovers no evidence that the Catholic fish tradition was a favor by the Pope to fishermen. (Economists have investigated the effect of the end of the mandatory Friday fish fry, still a Wisconsin tradition, on the price of fish, with an article in American Economic Review (on JSTOR) that was reprinted in The Daily Economist.) Anglican Britain, on the other hand, saw some benefit in continuing the fish days as a way to stimulate their merchant marine and provide experienced hands for the Royal Navy.

Professor Fagan does not offer a learned disquisition on

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a rather cumbersome regression of the ex-vessel price of fish at New England ports to estimate with the computing technology of the mid-1960s. Rather, he focuses on the two principal fisheries of the Middle Ages and their evolution, one in which shipwrights learned how to build for the open ocean, fishermen learned of the best fishing grounds, and fishing fleets might have made passages to North America well before Christopher Columbus and John Cabot mapped the Atlantic coast of the Americas. (And "Brasil" was the fisherman's version of the Big Rock Candy Mountain.)

Ocean fishing began close to the shore, often using tidal nets called "kiddells," leading to the expression "different kettle of fish," and the earliest catches were often eel or herring, a fish with a spawning run that resembles that of the Great Lakes smelt. Herring, however, were difficult to preserve. They had to be carefully cleaned, and required a great deal of salting to retard spoilage, yielding a not terribly appetizing product that Alexander Dolgun and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn would recognize as the stuff used in the Soviet Gulag to conform to regulations that prisoners-in-transit be fed while ensuring that they would be miserable. Because they could be relatively easily harvested, people worked on methods to improve preservation, leading ultimately to what the Baltic peoples call "matjes" herring. This recipe sounds different from our Great Lakes marinated herring.

A little pick-me-up for the night's posting.

I'm still looking for something close to the taste of Smith Brothers' Appe'Tang pickled herring, no longer in production.

Further offshore were the cod, a larger fish that could also be preserved more easily. (Clean it, extract the oil from the liver, dry it and salt it and you have something called "stockfish" that keeps indefinitely and can be made tender with a bit of water.) Better ships, better nets, and better navigational methods expanded the cod fishery, although keeping the monasteries and the masses provisioned with sufficient fish was still a struggle. Global climate changes affected both the location and the access to the fishing grounds as the Medieval Warm Period gave way to the Little Ice Age (global warming and cooling without SUVs or nuclear weapons?)

The discovery that falling water could be used to power mill stones and woodworking machinery inspired some people to use the millponds to raise carp. These farms provided many a costly lesson in circulating the water and keeping the fish healthy, lessons that contemporary fish farmers contribute to.

Despite preservation and inland farming, getting the fish to market in the days before refrigeration was a struggle against spoilage. Fish on Friday has numerous references to the fast horses and teams relaying wagons to hustle the catch to monastery and palace, a tradition that survives in the Class C parcels and fish headcode and Henry's "Flying Kipper" on the Island of Sodor, and some hot refrigerator trains out of Boston on the New Haven.

The book ends with the development of the New England fisheries and the triangular trade of the early colonial period. It is in the discussion of trade relations that the book disappoints. First, a relatively minor complaint. A book about fishing and fish markets requires good maps. Yet the few maps offered to depict "locations mentioned in the book" often leave out locations mentioned on adjacent pages, such as Scarborough, the site of a major fish fair (was the parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme to mask the smell of overripe herring?) and Bristol and most of the Hanse ports. It's in the discussion of Hanse management of the fishing trade where Professor Fagan, (emeritus anthropology) demonstrates the utility of interdisciplinary cooperation. The Hanseatic League (the name, much like "Soviet Union," doesn't translate well into English) united international trading enterprises called Hanse as a sort of proto-customs union with protection of the sea lanes that is today provided by nation-states, sometimes by treaty. Here's a complaint Professor Fagan levels at the Hanse, page 176.

The colder conditions of the Little Ice Age shortened cereal-growing seasons throughout Norway, especially in the north. Occasional food shortages, made worse by the Black Death, raised the specter of famine. The opportunistic Hanse arrived in Bergen in cogs bulging with grain from their home ports. The same ships departed crammed with stockfish. The Hanse monopoly had few benefits for Norway, but it broadened the market for stockfish and provided a relatively secure return in grain.

Sounds like mutually beneficial trade to me. Were the terms of trade unfavorable to either party?

Fish on Friday includes a number of recipes, some so ancient the authors recommend modern cooks not attempt them, others modified to reflect the greater availability of seasonings today (the medievals, let alone nineteenth century farmers, would be startled that salt and pepper are boring.) Most of the recipes are somewhat upmarket: here, from Peasant to Palace, p. 5, is a recipe that brings to mind a song. The recipe may have occurred to a frugal Russian contemplating a stockfish operation.

RASPUTIN'S JELLIED FISH HEADS.

Codfish heads (use 6 to 12, depending on size)
1 cup finely chopped onion
1/4 cup wine vinegar
Salt and pepper
Grated fresh horseradish

If purchasing whole fish, clean and remove heads, save fish for soup [or stockfish??] and place heads in heavy saucepan. Add water to cover and bring to boil over medium heat. Add onion and wine vinegar, and salt and pepper to taste. Cook gently about 15 minutes. Let cool, then chill until natural jelly forms. Serve cold with horseradish.