Cod liver

Foie de morue

What it is

Cod liver was industrialised for its oil long before anyone tinned it whole: nineteenth-century Norwegian and Icelandic plants rendered it as medicine against rickets, and the flesh of the fish was in some seasons the by-product. The tinned liver is cooked exactly once, sealed, in nothing but the oil it gives off itself.

In the kitchen

Pour the oil off into a jar and keep it — it makes an iodised vinaigrette — then crush the liver with lemon and raw shallot. Warm it gently at most; past a bare simmer it splits into oil and grain.

Goes with

Rye berries Lemon Shallot Egg Black pepper Cornichon

Same species

Cod Hwangtae (freeze-dried pollack) Cod tongues Mentaiko Salt cod Smoked cod roe

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