Cioppino (a San Francisco dish)

[Laurence Horn]

At 1:54 AM -0400 9/20/01, Bapopik at AOL.COM wrote:
>    DARE has 1954.
>    From John Mariani's ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN FOOD & DRINK:
>
>_cioppino._  A fish stew cooked with tomatoes, wine, and spices, and
>associated at least since the 1930s with San Francisco, where it is
>still a specialty in many restaurants (1935).  The word is Italian,
>from a Genoese dialect, _ciuppin_, for a fish stew,

This I can believe (although it leaves open where "ciuppin" derives from)

>    This cioppino, pronounced "cho-PEEN-o," is a bouillabaisse of
>sorts, a kissing cousin of the bouillabaisse (Col. 3--ed.) of
>Mediterranean cities, but this a California creation found nowhere
>else.  Don Sweeney, Jr., and Gene McAteer, the Erin lads who operate
>Tarantino's, told me the name is a corruption of the Italian word
>cuoco, which means "cook."  A fisherman's concoction made first by
>the Genoese who man the small fishing boats which chug in and out of
>the harbor.

This I can't.  Not that there's any reason to doubt the word of two
lads of Erin on the sources of the name for an Italian fish soup, of
course.

It is indeed a wonderful soup/dish, whatever its etymology.  And
almost as messy to eat as it is delicious.  But I think, following
the Shakey-Preston protocol, that I promise not to try making
cioppino if Sweeney and McAteer promise not to derive it.

larry