My first experience of bouillabaisse on a flower-shaded terrace next to the local lycée in Vientiane some 30 years ago was a revelation. I loved the array of glistening fish and the spicy broth that surrounded it, with the accompanying croutons and rouille (a Provençal sauce made of chilies, breadcrumbs, garlic and olive oil).
It was only on my first visit to France some time later that I realized that the bouillabaisse I ate in the landlocked Kingdom of Laos might not have been the real thing, even though it was a former French colony. For a start, none of the fish came from the ocean and the piquancy of the soup was due to local spices and chili rather than the traditional stock of rock fish, crabs and saffron.
Subsequent helpings of bouillabaisse in other parts of the world didn't equal that first encounter, so I decided to investigate further at the birthplace of the dish — the sprawling, scruffy port of Marseille.
France's oldest city is famous for creating three things: the national anthem, the "French Connection" drug trade and bouillabaisse. Of these, the renowned fish stew of Provence is easily the most controversial and complicated to describe. For a start, no one can even agree on the etymology of the actual word, let alone the origins of the dish. Romantics will assure you that the word derives from the abbess of a Marseille convent (bouille-abbesse or the abbess's boil) but more literal historians go for bouillon-abaissé, "to reduce by evaporation," as this is what actually occurs during its preparation. As to its origins, some classicists believe it came to Marseille with the Ancient Greeks in 500 B.C., while others prefer the myth that it was the soup made by Venus to send her husband Vulcan to sleep so she could pursue her affair with Mars.
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Photo by Jean Cazals for The Wall Street Journal Europe