The cod (baccalà) I buy at the supermarket, in the trays at the refrigerated counter, is absolutely not like the one my mother used to buy at the New Market in Andria a long time ago.
There was a man who sold only stockfish, and his "advertising message" was: "Don't you take the cod? Because the longer it stays, the heavier it gets!" (the original phrase was in a dialect not from Andria but from some nearby town: Non v'accatat o baccalà che chiù sta e chiù peis.)
Obviously, it was an encouragement to buy because the stockfish, after being taken out of huge boxes, was placed in a basin with continuously flowing water.
The more the fish absorbed the liquid, the more the water would cost the same as the fish. The flavor was very good, and the flesh was not white but tended towards yellowish.
In reality, however, it was not cod but, more precisely, stockfish which, unlike cod, was soaked to gain the right consistency of the flesh and not to remove the salt.
We used it for the recipe of cod (baccalà) with sweet olives.