Growing up in a Brazilian-American household, I’ve long appreciated the delicious versatility of the Atlantic cod, scientific name Gadus morhua, known to the Portuguese-speaking world as bacalhau in its preferred salted and dried form. It was only when I began working as a map librarian, however, that I saw how powerful cod truly was. Centuries before my family started serving it for holiday meals, European fishing boats traveled all the way to the edge of the world (as they knew it), searching for cod fishing grounds and mapping the unfamiliar coastline along the way. Eventually their maps would be seen in Europe, spreading the news of a plentiful “Land of Cod” and many other curious details of a new continent that they began calling “America.”
