Six salt cod fritters straight from the pan: a Barcelona tavern bite, golden outside and soft inside, at Carrer de la Cera, 49.
We make them with flaked salt cod, garlic and parsley. We cook the cod gently with the garlic and parsley, work in the flour until the dough comes together and, once it has cooled, add the eggs two at a time. There is no potato: these are salt cod fritters and nothing else. We fry them to order and serve six.
€10.50
Salt cod fritters, bunyols de bacallà, are a softer cousin of the salt cod croquette and seem to have been born in the inns and taverns of Barcelona, spreading from there across Catalonia. Their first appearance in writing is in 1864, in a comic play by Serafí Pitarra that is set, fittingly, inside a tavern.
In the nineteenth century Barcelona’s taverns put them out in the morning next to the dish of allioli, and later they were sold in the street: the folklorist Joan Amades describes breakfast sellers going round the markets and factory gates with big baskets of fried cod and fritters. A poem from 1890 already places them at the Ninot market.
They are Lenten food, from the days when meat was forbidden, but salt cod kept all year round, which is why they are eaten in every season. The batter is usually flour and eggs, sometimes with potato. Manuel Vázquez Montalbán recorded a close relative: Catalan-style salt cod meatballs.
If you like salt cod and slow-cooked dishes, try the meatballs with cuttlefish and peas (€16.50) or the Can Lluís stewed snails (€18.90).
Further reading: Història de la cuina catalana i occitana, vol. VIII, by Vicent Marqués (Edicions Sidillà, 2025); Àpats, by Alba Sunyer and Clara Antúnez (Parcir Edicions Selectes and Joviat, 2022); and La cocina de los mediterráneos, by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán (Ediciones B, 2002).
