skulljoe n Also scully-joe, skully-jo Also sp sculjo, sculljoe seMA
Salted and dried haddock or codfish.
1884 Goode Fisheries U.S. 1.228 seMA, At Provincetown a Haddock salted and dried after being split is called by the name of “Skulljoe,” or “Scoodled Skulljoe.” 1890 Century Dict. 5430, Sculjo, sculljoe. . . A haddock not split, but with the belly cut off, slack-salted, and dried hard. [Century Ed: Provincetown, Massachusetts.] Ibid 5679, Skulljoe. . . A variant of sculjo. 1933 Sun (Baltimore MD) 30 Mar 10/6 (Hench Coll.) MA, Cape Cod Faces Skully-Jo Lack. . . Provincetown faces a real problem. What’s to be done about skully-jo? . . Skully-jo is petrified fish—haddock, to be exact, although some say a small cod will do as well. It is eaten raw. . . The fact is, it can’t be “eaten,” exactly. It’s too solid. Perhaps “gnaw” would be the word. . . Two appellations are in general use: “skulljoe”—probably the original—and “skully-jo,” a derivation. 1937 FWP Guide MA 331 seMA, Skully-jo, once popular, is no longer made by any but a few Portuguese families. This is codfish or haddock cured in the sun, ‘till it’s hard enough to bend lead pipe around.’ When fish was plentiful the Portuguese made barrels of it and the children carried it about in their pockets and chewed it instead of candy. It was said that ‘the longer you chewed on a junk of skully-jo, the more you had.’ 1988 Nickerson Days to Remember 135 Cape Cod MA (as of c1915), Scully-Joe—Small cod or flatfish (flounder), dry salted (corned), then cured by drying in the sun. Often eaten without cooking by cutting strips of it for a snack.