stockfish

9.6

A fish often made from cod that is split, cleaned and air-dried without salt

noun
/ˈstɑkˌfɪʃ/

: bacalao seco

In his classic Cuisine of Nice (Penguin, 1991), Jacques Medecin recommends that stockfish be soaked for eight days before it is cooked in the stew it gives its name to.

Examples

Cabillaud is fresh cod, morue is salt cod, and merluche is dried cod, or stockfish.

Academic text (1991)
In addition to sitting astride one of the world's richest fisheries, these islands are also blessed with a near-perfect climate for drying fish in the open air to make stockfish.
Stockfish, hard as wood, is the eponymous ingredient in the most typical dish of Nice, estocaficada.

Academic text (1991)
Cabillaud is fresh cod, morue is salt cod, and merluche is dried cod, or stockfish.
The chef explained how to cook stockfish properly to enhance its taste and create a delicious meal.

Surface Forms

stockfish singular

stockfishes plural

Morphology

stockfish = stock + fish (opaque) = stock + fish

Although formally 'stock' + 'fish', the meaning 'air-dried (unsalted) fish' is a specialized sense not directly derivable by an average learner from the component words.

Etymology

Stockfish comes from an old Norse word stokkfiskr, from stokk 'stick' and fisk 'fish', because people dried cod on wooden sticks or racks. That's why stockfish still means fish that has been split, cleaned, and air-dried without salt.