This quantitative study of commodity prices examines the early modern food market, a period and topic widely neglected by historians owing to a lack of data or palaeographic expertise that has prompted scholars to turn their attention to later periods. Despite the ubiquitous presence of fish in European food markets, specialists have difficulty identifying its consumption levels or price. This paper provides a large panorama of qualitative observations about food provisioning practices and the cost hierarchy of commodities on the French market from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. We conclude that sea fish became an affordable alternative source of protein in the general diet. Our research demonstrates that cod fish occupied a good place on the French food market, competing successfully against top-selling commodities such as meat.