Cabillaud and Lingcod are different fish, but they're close enough in the kitchen to stand in for one another.
Gadidae
Cabillaud
Fresh Atlantic cod (*Gadus morhua*) as it's sold in French and northern-European fishmongers — firm, white-fleshed, mild, and flaking into large pearly leaves when cooked. The same species that becomes salted Morue (Bacalhau in Portuguese) when cured for months, but treated as a different culinary entity in fresh form: cabillaud rôti with hollandaise, cabillaud poché à l'huile d'olive, dos de cabillaud en croûte d'herbes, and the bistro classic cabillaud sauce vierge are built around its mild profile and clean separation. Once cured into Morue, the fish reaches a different shelf in the same shop; the recipes change too — brandade, accras, bacalhau à brás. The naming convention reflects this: in modern French, cabillaud always means fresh, morue almost always means cured.
Full guide →Hexagrammidae
Lingcod
Lingcod is neither a ling nor a cod. Ophiodon elongatus is a greenling — a big-headed, heavily toothed ambush predator of the rocky North Pacific coast, from Baja California to the Gulf of Alaska — and the name is a nineteenth-century settler's guess that stuck. It is one of the best white fish on that coast and barely known off it. The flesh is dense and large-flaked, firmer and more forgiving than cod, holding its shape in a hot pan or on a grill where cod would collapse, and it is the standard fish of Pacific Northwest fish and chips. Its oddest feature is the colour: perhaps a fifth of the fish caught have flesh that is a startling blue-green, a harmless pigment called biliverdin that comes from the diet and cooks out to pure white. Buyers should know that the same market name is used for entirely different fish elsewhere — in Britain and Scandinavia, ling means Molva molva, a genuine cod relative from the Atlantic — so a recipe calling for lingcod outside North America almost certainly means something else.
Full guide →Lingcod is the Pacific coast's answer to cod and the two are used for the same frying, taco and chowder jobs. Lingcod is denser and large-flaked and keeps its shape in a hot pan; cod is softer and breaks into wider, more delicate sheets.
| Country | Cabillaud | Lingcod |
|---|
| 🇺🇸United States | Cod | Lingcod |
| 🇬🇧United Kingdom | Cod | — |
| 🇫🇷France | Cabillaud | — |
| 🇪🇸Spain | Bacalao fresco | — |
| 🇦🇷Argentina | Bacalao fresco | — |
| 🇲🇽Mexico | Bacalao fresco | — |
| 🇵🇹Portugal | Bacalhau fresco | — |
| 🇧🇷Brazil | Bacalhau fresco | — |
| 🇮🇹Italy | Merluzzo | — |
| 🇩🇪Germany | Kabeljau | — |
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Wild Pacific cod, when the Atlantic stock is the problem
- ·Longline-caught Gadus macrocephalus
- ·Boneless 6 oz portions
- ·Individually vacuum-sealed and frozen
- ·5, 10 or 20 lb box
Wild Alaska Pacific Cod
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