Cioppino is a fish stew

Fish stew

Fish stew is a generic name for a stew with a base or food ingredients of fish or seafood.Types of fish stew from around the world include:*Asam Pedas and *Bouillabaisse...

 originating in San Francisco. Despite being considered an Italian dish, it is unknown in Italy, and it is only slightly comparable with various regional fish soup

Soup

Soup is a generally warm food that is made by combining ingredients such as meat and vegetables with stock, juice, water, or another liquid. Hot soups are additionally characterized by boiling solid ingredients in liquids in a pot until the flavors are extracted, forming a broth.Traditionally,...

s and stews of Italian cuisine

Italian cuisine

Italian cuisine has developed through centuries of social and political changes, with roots as far back as the 4th century BCE. Italian cuisine in itself takes heavy influences, including Etruscan, ancient Greek, ancient Roman, Byzantine, Jewish and Arab cuisines...

. Cioppino is traditionally made from the catch of the day, which in the dish's place of origin is typically a combination of dungeness crab

Dungeness crab

The Dungeness crab, Metacarcinus magister , is a species of crab that inhabits eelgrass beds and water bottoms on the west coast of North America. It typically grows to across the carapace and is a popular seafood...

, clams

CLaMS

CLaMS is a modular chemistry transport model system developed at Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany. CLaMS was first described by McKenna et al. and was expanded into three dimensions by Konopka et al....

, shrimp

Shrimp

Shrimp are swimming, decapod crustaceans classified in the infraorder Caridea, found widely around the world in both fresh and salt water. Adult shrimp are filter feeding benthic animals living close to the bottom. They can live in schools and can swim rapidly backwards. Shrimp are an important...

, scallops, squid

Squid

Squid are cephalopods of the order Teuthida, which comprises around 300 species. Like all other cephalopods, squid have a distinct head, bilateral symmetry, a mantle, and arms. Squid, like cuttlefish, have eight arms arranged in pairs and two, usually longer, tentacles...

, mussels and fish. The seafood is then combined with fresh tomatoes in a wine sauce, and served with toasted bread, either sourdough

Sourdough

Sourdough is a dough containing a Lactobacillus culture, usually in symbiotic combination with yeasts. It is one of two principal means of biological leavening in bread baking, along with the use of cultivated forms of yeast . It is of particular importance in baking rye-based breads, where yeast...

 or baguette

Baguette

A baguette is "a long thin loaf of French bread" that is commonly made from basic lean dough...

. The dish is comparable to cacciucco and brodetto from Italy, as well as other European fish dishes, such as bouillabaisse

Bouillabaisse

Bouillabaisse is a seafood soup made with various kinds of cooked fish and shellfish and vegetables, flavored with a variety of herbs and spices such as garlic, orange peel, basil, bay leaf, fennel and saffron. Bouillabaisse is a traditional Provençal fish stew originating from the port city of...

, burrida, and bourride of the French Provence

French cuisine

French cuisine is a style of food preparation originating from France that has developed from centuries of social change. In the Middle Ages, Guillaume Tirel , a court chef, authored Le Viandier, one of the earliest recipe collections of Medieval France...

, suquet de peix from Catalan speaking regions of coastal Spain

Spanish cuisine

Spanish cuisine consists of a variety of dishes, which stem from differences in geography, culture and climate. It is heavily influenced by seafood available from the waters that surround the country, and reflects the country's deep maritime roots...

.

History

It was developed in the late 1800s by Portuguese and Italian fishermen who settled in the North Beach section of San Francisco. Originally it was made on the boats while out at sea and later became a staple as Italian restaurants proliferated in San Francisco. The name comes from ciuppin, a word in the Ligurian dialect

Ligurian language (Romance)

Ligurian is a Gallo-Romance language spoken in Liguria in Northern Italy, parts of the Mediterranean coastal zone of France, Monaco and in the villages of Carloforte and Calasetta in Sardinia. Genoese , spoken in Genoa, the capital of Liguria, is its most important dialect...

 of the port city of Genoa

Genoa

Genoa |Ligurian]] Zena ; Latin and, archaically, English Genua) is a city and an important seaport in northern Italy, the capital of the Province of Genoa and of the region of Liguria....

, meaning "to chop" or "chopped" which described the process of making the stew by chopping up various leftovers of the day's catch. At least one restaurant in San Francisco, the eponymous Cioppino's, describes an apocryphal story in which the name derived from the heavily Italian-accented cry of the wharf cooks for the fishermen to "chip in" some of their catch to the collective soup pot.

Preparation

Generally the seafood is cooked in broth and served in the shell, including the crab (if any) that is often served halved or quartered. It therefore requires special utensils, typically a crab fork

Crab fork

A Crab fork is a very small fork for extracting flesh from a crab or lobster. Crab forks may be special-purpose food utensils decorated or constructed specifically for crabs and lobsters, or may simply be very small forks sold or used for the purpose....

 and cracker

Crab cracker

A crab cracker is a specialized food utensil, similar in construction to certain types of nutcrackers, used to crack the hard shells of crabs and lobsters by pulling the two handles together to access the flesh inside, while preparing or eating them....

. Depending on the restaurant, it may be accompanied by a bib to prevent food stains on clothing, which is also sometimes encouraged by restaurants for patrons to use as a sign to attract attention to the restaurant's food, second possibly damp napkin, or a second bowl for the shells. As a variation, the "lazy man's" cioppino is served with seafood shelled and crab legs cracked.