How did cod end up on the Christmas tables around Europe? It is all thanks to a shipwreck. It all started with a shipwreck in 1432 that introduced Pietro Querini to stockfish - an ancient Viking method of wind-drying fish - which he brought to Venice almost a century before the Basques popularized salt cod through Atlantic trade. While stockfish relied on Arctic air and salt cod on preservation with salt, both became the perfect solution when the Church strictly forbade meat consumption on holy days.