Isn't lox just brined/pressed salmon? Not smoked. Smoked salmon is nova lox isn't it?
You're correct.
True authentic
"Lox" is nothing more than salt cured salmon, and never smoked. The term is a derivation of the Danish, Norwegian, Yiddish, German, and Swedish terms laks, lachs, and lax which all mean the same thing,
"Salmon". Salt was/is used only as a preservative. The preferred cut, the bellies, are heavily salted, stacked (pressed), and stored for an extended period of time, often weeks. That's followed by a series of long soakings to freshen, then a drying process.
With the large wave of migration of Central and Eastern Europeans, predominately Jewish, to the Eastern seaboard of the US in the late 1800s, there also came a demand for salmon, which was found to be cheap and abundant in those days. For the most part, the salmon was sourced from the Pacific Northwest and, since refrigerated rail cars were in their infancy, shipped to the East Coast packed in salt. At a later point, a more abundant, cheaper, and closer source of salmon, was found in the coastal waters off of Nova Scotia. The fisherman returning from those waters with their catch also brought back the local native process using a milder cure and cold smoking the salmon. Hence, the term
"Nova Lox" is something of an oxymoron.