The fish called "cod" in English is called cabillaud [kah-bee-YOH] in French. I remember it being considered as an inexpensive and not really high-quality fish back in the 1970s and '80s in Paris. Now it's held in much higher esteem and can be pretty expensive. Cabillaud is fresh cod, not the salt-cured version, which is called morue in France. Often, cabillaud is referred to as morue fraîche.
The latest (electronic) editions of the Larousse Gastronomique food and cooking encyclopedia describe cabillaud as having une chair délicate, blanche et feuilletée. (Chair means flesh, and feuilleté means flaky.) I think that, because cod is so flaky that it kind of falls apart when it is not handled gently and cooked very carefully. That might be why it was not considered a first-class fish in the past, at least among the Parisians I knew. It was not easy to cook at home and it was certainly not expensive.
I can't find any mention of cabillaud being a delicious fish in my 1967 edition of the Larousse Gastronomique. Other old cookbooks — for example, La Véritable Cuisine de Famille, written by a woman known as Tante Marie and published nearly 100 years ago — gives at least half a dozen recipes for cooking salt cod, but only one or two for fresh cod. For centuries, I believe, cod was sold mostly in its salt-cured form in France because it needed to be salted down to survive the long voyage from the cod fishing grounds in the northwest Atlantic Ocean back to France. Nowadays it can be kept fresh under refrigeration.
These days, the cut of codfish that is held in highest esteem in France is le dos de cabillaud. (Dos means "back" or dorsal.) It's not just a boneless filet (or fillet) but it's the thickest and firmest par of the cod filet. (In North America, we tend to use the spelling "filet" instead of "fillet", which is more used in the British Iles. Both are pronounced [fil-AY], I think. Do you say "fill-it" of fish?)
Later editions of the Larousse Gastronomique explain that
le dos de poisson correspond à l'ensemble des muscles de la partie dorsale des poissons à deux filets, situé au-dessus de l'arête centrale. Il est plus charnu et plus ferme que le ventre. (
Une arête is a fish bone in French.
Charnu is related to
chair and means meaty or fleshy.
Ventre means belly.) I haven't found any reference to
dos de cabillaud in other French cookbooks I have. I have seen it described in English as
"loin of cod", "cod back", or "loin filet/fillet of cod."
Walt and I bought and cooked a loin filet of cod a few days ago. We cooked it gently in melted butter and white wine and enjoyed it with capers, shrimp, steamed potatoes, and steamed cauliflower florets. Those are the photos above.