the best known of a large number of Mediterranean fish soup/stew dishes, which include the Greek Kakavía and the Catalan Suquet, is associated particularly with Marseilles. An essay by Davidson (1988b) deals with its history and the technique for making it, prefaced by this account of its distinguishing characteristics:
On the history, it is widely supposed that the dish had a primitive origin: fishermen sitting on the beach after the day's fishing and preparing for themselves, with a few staples which they had brought along, a one-pot supper which would use up the least saleable items in their catch. There is no reason to doubt this, but a study of written sources shows that when the dish was brought into the world of restaurants and cookery books it was rather different.
The earliest recipe which is clearly relevant was given by Jourdain Le Cointe in his La Cuisine de Santé (1790). It was not headed Bouillabaisse but Matellotte du Poisson. It portrayed fishermen disembarking on a river bank where their wives would light a clear fire and bring to the boil in a small cauldron a mixture of many of the ingredients of a 20th-century bouillabaisse (but with the olive oil as an optional item), into which little fish from the nets would go. The first recipe to appear under the name Bouillabaisse (precisely, Bouillabaisse à la Marseillaise) was given in Le Cuisinier Durand (1830) and advised using expensive sea bass and spiny lobster; it had thus moved away from the primitive scene on the shore or the river bank. Soon afterwards, in 1839, Le Cuisinier méridionale had a recipe with a similar title, advocating a mixture of sea fish and freshwater fish; indeed, the anonymous author of the book listed eight of each category, again including sea bass and spiny lobster.
The work already cited considers four principal explanations of the origin of the word ‘bouillabaisse’ and opts for that favoured by Littré in his great dictionary of 1883: that the expression should be interpreted as bouillon abaissé, literally ‘broth lowered’, i.e. the level of the broth is lowered by evaporation during cooking—or, as we would say, it is ‘reduced’. On the question whether and why rapid boiling is necessary, and what various authors mean when they say that this achieves ‘amalgamation of the oil, water and wine’, clues provided by Harold McGee (1984) and conclusive experiments in the kitchen of Philip and Mary Hyman, recorded by Davidson, led to the explanation that an emulsion is being formed.
Incidentally, Davidson had criticized two American ladies whose cookery book included a recipe for a bouillabaisse which was based on two cans of soup (one of tomato and one of pea) and included no fish, no herbs, and no olive oil. It has emerged, however, that a partial exoneration of these supposed miscreants is in order. In two of the best-known traditional Provençal cookery books there are recipes for ‘bouillabaisse’ which contain no fish. The term must be allowed to have more elasticity than might be supposed.
Alan Davidson was a distinguished author and publisher, and one of the world's best-known writers on fish and fish cookery. In 1975 he retired early from the diplomatic service—after serving in, among other places, Washington, Egypt, Tunisia, and Laos, where he was British Ambassador—to pursue a fruitful second career as a food historian and food writer extraordinaire. Among his popular books are Seafood of South-East Asia, North Atlantic Seafood, and Mediterranean Seafood. In 2003, shortly before his death, he was awarded the Erasmus Prize for his contribution to European culture.
McGee, Harold (1984), On Food and Cooking, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
