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Other from Norway

Rotted (traditional) cod liver oiltran

This is a historical reconstruction of how cod liver oil was made before the 1850s, from period sources. Fishermen packed cod livers into barrels through the winter fishery and left them to rot, so the liver cells burst and oil rose to the top to be skimmed, pale at first and darker later; the last oil was boiled out of the remains. It is a boundary entry, since the oil is freed by putrefaction and the livers' own breakdown, not made by a chosen culture, and it is not a method to copy.

Fully documentedOther8.7 days – 8.8 days

Recipe

Rotted (traditional) cod liver oil, a photo from Wikimedia Commons
Photo: Orange-kun, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
No fixed amounts recordedHistorical practice with no fixed amounts. One account gives the livers of 40 to 80 cwt of stockfish (weighed dry) for a ton of 240 litres of oil, in the French Newfoundland fishery.
Cod livers, gall bladders left onPacked into barrels day by day through the fishery; the roes went into separate barrels[moller1895]
Livers aloneMack Brothers of Tromsø wrote that all these oils are prepared alone from fish livers[dejongh1849]
StarterThe livers break down and putrefy by themselves in the closed barrels (Möller 1895)

Total time across the recorded steps: 8.7 days – 8.8 days

Start
Drag the bar or press Play

What changes: Each day's cod livers go into a barrel until it is full and closed

Step 1 of 4
Pack the livers into barrels through the fishery
Time
The first barrels date from January and the last from the beginning of April; each is headed up when full
Reported
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented

Output: closed barrels of cod livers.

Flavour
Not documented
Texture
Not documented
Colour
Not documented

Microbes at work in this step

Not documented for this step.

Method

Measured measured in a studySet fixed by a specification or tested recipeReported one source reports itTypical a general value, not sourced for this fermentUnconfirmed not yet checked against a source

At a glance

This is a historical reconstruction of how cod liver oil was made before the 1850s, from period sources. Fishermen packed cod livers into barrels through the winter fishery and left them to rot, so the liver cells burst and oil rose to the top to be skimmed, pale at first and darker later; the last oil was boiled out of the remains. It is a boundary entry, since the oil is freed by putrefaction and the livers' own breakdown, not made by a chosen culture, and it is not a method to copy. Made in 4 steps over 8.7 days – 8.8 days. The longest step, keep skimming as the livers rot further, takes 8 days (de Jongh L.J 1849).

Key numbers
Main step8 daysReported[dejongh1849]Keep skimming as the livers rot further
Temperature120–150 °CReported[moller1895]Boil the remains in iron kettles

What makes this one different

Unlike the steam process that replaced it, the livers were not used fresh. They were left to rot for weeks, so the oil carried putrefaction products that gave the brown oils their colour, smell and taste.

Related ferments

Variants

  • Steam-rendered pale oil (Peter Møller process)Peter Møller set up the first steam factory on Giske in 1853. Fresh livers, used within 12 hours of the catch, are sorted, washed and melted over a water bath or in steam-jacketed pans, so no putrefaction products enter the oil.
  • Pollack and Tromsø light brown oilPollack livers putrefy slowly, so they were warmed fresh in iron kettles at moderate heat and the clear oil poured off as light brown oil (Tromsø, 1841).

Safety

This is a historical process, not a method to follow. The period sources describe putrid livers and brown oils with a strong, bitter taste; a modern product sold as fermented cod liver oil is not documented by these sources.

History and sources

Every number is labelled with how it is known. How this atlas is made

In 1841 the Dutch physician L. J. de Jongh asked the consul Charles Konow in Bergen and Mack Brothers in Tromsø how the oil was made, and printed their answers in his book on the three kinds of cod liver oil (in English, 1849). By 1890 there were 54 steam factories in the Romsdal district alone (Møller 1895).

Microbes
No study we found names its microbes.
  1. [dejongh1849] de Jongh L.J., The three kinds of cod liver oil, comparatively considered with reference to their chemical and therapeutic properties, transl. Edward Carey, 1849 (Internet Archive scan, NLM copy), pp. 17–22archive
  2. [moller1895] Möller F. Peckel 1895, Cod-liver oil and chemistry, London (Internet Archive scan, Cornell copy), section on methods of preparing cod-liver oil in Norway and the steam processarchive
  3. [wp-clo] Wikipedia, Cod liver oil (history section, outline), read 2026-10wiki