the Basques had spent centuries surrounded by the Roman Empire, where salted fish was a common food, which is probably why they thought of salt-curing whale meat. Now they started salting cod. The market was enormous. All of the formerly Roman world ate salt fish, and the Basques had a salt fish to sell that, after a day or more of soaking in fresh water, was whiter, leaner, and better, according to many, than the dark, oily, Mediterranean species that had been used before.
