The title of a popular book on sale at the moment declares that Venice is a Fish. This refers to the shape of the city, to which aerial photos will attest. However, this statement could equally apply if it’s true that we are what we eat, for the traditional cuisine of the floating city has a distinctly fishy flavour. This is hardly a surprise, bearing in mind that Venice emerges from the centre of a lagoon on the edge of the Adriatic Sea, both swimming with all sorts of scaly and finned creatures.
What is a surprise however, is that one of the most popular fish featuring in the city’s cuisine comes not from the lagoon but from a remote Norwegian archipelago about 2,500 kilometres from the St Mark’s Square. The reason why baccalà – not salt cod as is commonly thought, but air-dried stockfish – is so popular in Venice is based, literally, on an accident.
In 1432 a Venetian merchant, Pietro Querini, found himself shipwrecked off the Lofoten islands in Norway. While he was waiting for someone to send a Venetian galley to pick him up, he gorged himself on the local dried fish and bought a large quantity of it as emergency rations for the return journey, in case of similar misfortunes. Arriving back in Venice without incident, Querini sold the baccalà on the Rialto and it became an overnight sensation. Ships have been going back and forth to Norway picking up supplies for hungry Venetians ever since.