On Thu, 10 Mar 2005 21:09:41 +0100, Peter Volsted >
wrote:

>Alf - your interesting story of rotten cod in London tends me to
>recommend you Elizabeth David's "Harvest of the cold Months. The Social
>History Of Ice And Ices", Penguin Books, London, 1994. Among other good
>things there are interesting narrations on the use of ice for
>fish-transportations into London in 17.-18. century from northern and
>western parts of the kingdom - and from Norway.

Well, that is in fact wellknown, but it did not always protect
completely against rottening of the fish. Problem was most probably
that not all people involved in transport or storing cared so much
about having the fish always covered by ice.
Ice stored in sawmill dust keeps for a very long period, but if you
transported the fish, you had to pick out the ice blocks from the
sawmill dusts and crush it. It rather quickly melted in summertime and
if the transporter did not care, it melted and the fish was rottening.
(or anything else)

My grandfather sailed ice from Kragerø to London in summer, so I have
stories about that., And crushed ice was used to cover fish at the
market in Oslo (and still is, but now we have coolers in addition
which prolong the life of the ice a lot, and all transport workers are
well teached about the importance of keeping ice and temperature under
strict control during transport and storage, especially when
transporting for a long distance on a car. But still I find taste of
cod in Oslo far from what cod taste when slaughtered just a few
minutes before preparation).
By the way, I remember those sawmill dust stores for ice when I was a
child, from where they was transferred to sail boats (more than 50
years earlier) to be sent to London etc.