Storecupboard cod, salt-cured or wind-dried or both, is an Atlantic fish that never ventured into the Mediterranean but nevertheless became obligatory fast-day food for the Catholic Church. Though imposed as a penance, when combined in southern France with olive oil, garlic and cream, it’s one of the glories of the Provenale kitchen.

Brandade de morue, a scooping-sauce prepared with salt-cod - bacalao/baccalha/morue-salé - beaten with olive oil into a thick, spoonable garlicky dip prepared in much the same way as a mayonnaise but with pounded fish-flesh rather than egg-yolk to form an emulsion. Sold ready-prepared in Christmas markets throughout Provence and neighbouring regions inland, where fresh fish wasn’t available for fast-days, brandade de morue often takes pride of place as the main event at the fasting supper of the Eve, Souper Maigre, prelude to Le Gros Souper (roast birds, wine, feasting till dawn).

Eaten with bitter cardoons (blanched), or celery sticks (raw) or warm baguette or toasted pain de levain, sourdough bread - or, for the sophisticates of Arles and Aix, with melba toast. Further up-river, the prosperous burgers of Lyon can choose among a dozen different varieties of brandade displayed in shiny silver bowls in the newly-refurbished central market, Les Halles, now renamed for the city’s favourite son, the chef who re-invented haute-cuisine, the late Paul Bocuse.

Each bowl, I observed on a shopping trip in the market in Lyon some ten years ago (by river, the only way to travel), came labelled with provenance and price. With or without cream. With cold-pressed olive oil (village of origin proudly named), or with one of the lesser oils (sunflower). With garlic or without (really?). Another, pale pink, prepared with smoked salmon imported from Scotland (why ever not?). And a rustic version from the mountain villages where olive-trees don’t grow, prepared with walnut oil and wind-dried stockfish, proof of trade with the Vikings, who chewed it in strips, like gum, and never left home without it.

As a result of the Viking’s intrepid voyaging, recipes for wind-dried stockfish (rather than salt-cured cod) are littered along the coast of Africa and throughout the Mediterranean littoral, wherever the Vikings put into port for purposes of trade (a welcome alternative to rape and pillage). In Italy, stockfish is - was - popular in the Veneto where, confusingly, it’s known as baccala; and in Sicily, where Vikings sometimes settled, fishermen took refuge from marauding incomers in mirror-villages inland, bringing their storecuboards with them. While both methods of preserving what is, after all, an Atlantic fish not found in Mediterranean waters, wind-dried stockfish is - was - valued by isolated communities for longevity - it’s virtually immortal.

Salt-cod and stockfish recipes are interchangeable. In Norway, the traditional accompaniment for plain-poached stockfish is a sauce of melted butter and chopped hard-boiled eggs. Around the Mediterranean, however, olive oil and garlic are natural partners for salt-cod. A preference for one or other is a matter of tradition as much as taste. The flavor of stockfish is both stronger and more delicate than salt-cod - the difference, say, between a well-matured brie and a salty slab of cheddar. Feel free to go with the flow.

Brandade de morue

If you can buy your salt-cod ready-soaked, so much the better. If you’ve bought it in dried form, choose middle-cut, chop into 3-4 pieces and set it to soak for 48 hours in a large bowl of cold water, changing the water as often as you remember (at least 4 times). The inclusion of potato is optional but helps form the emulsion. For the finishing touch - black olives - look out for the little, wrinkled, naturally sweet, frost-cured olives of Nyons.

Serves 6-8

500g ready-soaked salt-cod (or stockfish)

1 onion, chunked

2 bayleaves

small bundle dried fennel-stalks or 1 teaspoon fennel-seeds

Short strip dried or fresh orange peel

1/2 teaspoon peppercorns

The brandade

about 250g warm olive oil

2-3 tablespoons warm cream

2-3 garlic cloves, crushed

(optional) 1 small potato, boiled and mashed

To serve

A few small black olives

Place the fish in a roomy saucepan with the poaching aromatics, cover generously with water and bring gently to the boil. Remove the pan from the heat as soon as the water gives a good belch. Add a glass of cold water to halt the cooking process, leave for 5 minutes to complete the softening-process, then drain, skin and use tweezers and your fingertips to find and remove any bones.

Starting with everything at more or less the same temperature - warmed to finger-heat - pound the fish-flesh in a mortar or processor to a paste with the garlic, (optional) potato and as much of the oil as you need to soften the mix (or keep the processor blades moving). Work in the rest of the oil gradually as if making a mayonnaise, adding the warm cream towards the end, until you have a thick white puree. A processor-puree will be smoother and whiter than if you make it by hand.

Spoon into individual bowls and top each portion with a single black olive (symbol of the darkness to come) or, better still, a scraping of black truffle. Serve warm with celery or blanched cardoon stalks or chunks of baguette, as for a paté. It’s very rich, so you don’t need much

p.s. Beloved paid-subscribers (not that I don’t value all my readers) will shortly be in receipt of Bolhinos de Bacalhau, Portugal’s parsley-and-potato salt-cod fritters, the perfect cure for the morning after, particularly with a fiery piri-piri salsa. Sorted.

p.p.s: More stories and recipes in the first of my four memoirs-with-food, Family Life (Bloomsbury). And The Flavours of Andalucia (Grub Street edition, illustrated throughout with my watercolours - happy days!).