THE SALT ROUTE

Welcome to Azaïs-Polito, makers of traditional Mediterranean cod brandade.

Discover the Sète cod epic, the famous cod route between Newfoundland, Fécamp and Sète. Newfoundland, for its resources and fisheries. Fécamp, France’s leading cod port in the 19th century, famous for its captains and crews. And Sète, the leading Mediterranean fishing port since 1666.

With Azaïs-Polito, delve into the history of the most flourishing trade in Languedoc from 1850: that of green cod and salted cod.

In the mid-19th century, in addition to its fishing fleet and considerable wine trade – for which the town made everything from corks – Sète boasted huge salt marshes producing dazzlingly white salt, as well as a number of cod drying plants, known as sécheries du Midi, identified as the largest in the Mediterranean. In 1892, M. Jouan, in his Dictionnaire géographique et administratif de la France, noted that at that time, cod dries received around 5 million green cod a year. This figure demonstrates the importance of the market at the time, in terms of the number of cod landed by the dockers in Sète, waiting to be dried under the hot Mediterranean sun.

The port of Sète was well and truly at the heart of the legendary salt route: Newfoundland, Fécamp, Sète. It’s even a hub, with its modern port and two jetties – one of them 600 metres long – to accommodate many of the cod boats that come here to stock up on “white gold” before setting off again for the cold seas of Newfoundland. The famous salted green cod is transformed into green cod in their holds.

This was all it took for three visionary shipowning and trading families from Sète to decide to invest in the construction of cod boats, in the purest tradition of the old terre-neuviers, specialised vessels for fishing in the cold seas. They strategically chose two home ports so as not to miss out on the comings and goings of the intense traffic of the time. First, thanks to the parent companies’ headquarters in Sète and the local salt resources, the Mediterranean port of Sète was chosen. Then, logically, the cod boats were positioned on the Atlantic, where they were built, as close as possible to the fishing routes to the Far North. Brand new, the Sétois mortutiers were based in Fécamp before the months of the annual fishing season. In 1857, the port of Fécamp boasted a fleet of 25 vessels, 6 of which belonged to Sétois families, making it the leading Fécamp shipyard.

Thanks to their commercial dynamism during this flourishing period for the port of Sète, the Couloumé-Bail and Nègres-Cousins companies alone owned 25% of the Fécamp cod fleet. Their vessels included the largest cod boat ever built, the Virgile, owned by Couloumé, whose deck and cod landing can be admired in these photos. This early trade on the salt route in the 19th century contributed considerably to the reputation of the port of Sète and its merchants, who were pioneers in the sale of cod in the south of France. They dared to fish at the source in order to control the supply.

In cooperation with the best crews of captains and fishermen from Fécamp, they took control of cod distribution in the Mediterranean basin and became the major players on this circuit. It is even said that it was the Sétois who set the price of cod for the national and even international markets.

Before the fishing seasons began, the Sétois bought the products of the Newfoundland inshore fishery and traded salt, wine and oil with the populations of the many indigenous fishing villages. Competitors had no choice but to bow out, finding themselves far less competitive on the market. Thanks to its preservative and nutritional qualities, cod became a favourite food at the beginning of the 20th century, an integral part of the diet of the Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian and Greek peoples.

Many of the gourmet recipes of the time are still to be found today. Thanks to this traditional heritage, many families in Languedoc and Provence still produce cod-based recipes today, including the famous Brandade de Sète. To celebrate the 350th anniversary of the creation of the port of Sète, the Azaïs-Polito cannery, the town’s last remaining cannery specialising in traditional canned fish, is bringing the Brandade de Sète up to date. A tribute to these ambitious 19th-century Sète merchants, who were so successful that they were able to offer the town’s population the delightful Molière theatre, built in 1904.

If the Terre-Neuvas knew how to fish for cod, one thing is certain: the people of Sétois knew how to sell it.