Cacciucco (Tuscan Fish Stew) I

Origin: Livorno, Italy

Source: Pellegrino Artusi, 1891

History

Cacciucco is the fish stew of Tuscany's Tyrrhenian coast, tied most closely to the port of Livorno. Artusi opens his entry not with the dish but with the word, which he says is perhaps understood only in Tuscany and along the Mediterranean shore — on the Adriatic side, he notes, they say *brodetto* instead, while in Florence a *brodetto* is something else entirely, an Easter soup of bread in broth thickened with beaten egg and lemon.

His version is one of the earliest in print. The fish goes to table on one platter and the bread on another — finger-thick slices, as many as the remaining juice will soak, dried at the fire but not toasted. It is already built on tomato and vinegar.

He then gives a second cacciucco, learned at Viareggio, which he calls far less tasty than the first but lighter and easier to digest. It is seasoned with garlic and with what he calls *zenzero* — and he stops to explain the local usage, because there *zenzero* means the hot red pepper, not ginger, and so black pepper is left out altogether.

The dish's earlier history we could not stand behind. The sixteenth-century origin among fishermen's families, the Turkish derivations offered for the name, and the Livornese rule about five kinds of fish for the five c's, we learned from popular reference and food-writing sources, and we were unable to locate the evidence they rest on.

Ingredients

Instructions

  1. Fry finely sliced half onion in oil with parsley and two whole garlic cloves until colored.
  2. Add 300 g tomatoes (or paste), salt, and pepper, and cook.
  3. Add diluted vinegar, boil briefly, discard the garlic, and pass the sauce, pressing well.
  4. Return the strained juice to the heat with 700 g assorted fish (small whole, large in pieces) and cook; adjust seasoning.
  5. Serve the drained fish and the finger-thick bread slices (dried, not toasted) in two separate dishes.

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