THE FISH OF BOUILLABAISSE 



to be our main dish. As soon as the boat was moored, 

 Narcisse brought on deck the little brazier on which 

 we should have to cook, put into it coal and kindling 

 wood, lighted it and leaned over it, blowing as hard 

 as he could to make it blaze. When the fuel had caught, 

 he got up, fixed up a portable table, set on it our 

 modest, but unbreakable, tablecloth of tin and ham- 

 mered iron, then finished the job by spreading over 

 our heads a sail to keep off the sun. Armand, the 

 skipper, now turned from a fisherman into a cook^ 

 cleaned the fish, washed them in the pure sea water, 

 and cut them into large slices. 



When he had finished, he put everything into a 

 pot, added as much water as was necessary to make 

 the liquor, with all the essential condiments, not 

 forgetting the saffron, and set the pot, now full almost 

 to the brim, on the stove, carefully covering it with 

 an old lid. Then, leaving the first stages of the cooking 

 to look after themselves, though he kept an eye on 

 them, he cut some broad slices of bread and put them 

 at the bottom of a bowl. The water in the pot soon 

 began to simmer, then to boil. From between the 

 pot and the lid there escaped a steam, not very much 

 to begin with, but soon thicker, and its aroma would 

 have excited our hunger still more if we had not 

 reached the very limits of appetite. Armand allowed 

 the boiling to go on for four to five minutes, then 

 got up, took off the lid and, with a wooden spoon 

 used only for this purpose, carefully scraped the thick, 

 mucilaginous crust which had formed on the sides 

 round the steaming liquor, put it back in the middle 

 again and mixed it up with the liquor itself. 



" This crust is the juice of the bouillabaisse," he 

 said. " Almost all the aroma of the fish stays in it. 

 If we left it stuck to the pot, we should lose it, and the 

 bouillabaisse wouldn't taste half so good." 



As I watched him at work, I tried to explain to 

 myself as a naturalist the actual use of this little opera- 

 68 



