vietnamesepho.blogspot.com
The origin of
phở is uncertain, and is mostly culled from oral histories. But during the colonial period, French contributed to many Vietnamese dishes. Pho or Feu needs fire to cook, you just can not cook many stuffs without fire. Vietnamese and French accents are not quiet the same, so French and Viet pronounce Feu differently. Way before 1920 there was no such thing as Pho, but thank to French contribution, Viet can enjoy pho.
Still, the consensus among academics, diners and restaurateurs is that it originated in North Vietnam during the 20th century, and that the first
phở restaurant opened in Hanoi in the 1920s.
The specific place of origin appears to be southwest of Hanoi in Nam Dinh province, believed to harbor both a Chinese and French connection. The noodles may come from China and French popularized the use of bones and lesser cuts of beef to make broth. The most likely ancestor is pot au feu, the classic French beef soup and stew combination.
Phở did not become popular in South Vietnam until the mid-1950s.
Some observers
believe phở may come from the Cantonese rice vermicelli
Hofan (河粉) which are interchangeably abbreviated as either
fan2 (粉, phấn in Tự Hán Việt) or
Ho2 (河, Hà inTự Hán Việt ), the two sounds giving the name "phở".
Both
fan and
pho refer to the same rice noodles found in Vietnam and Guangdong, China, suggesting that rice noodles may have been brought to Vietnam by Cantonese immigrants from the Guangdong province in the early 20th century. The noodles are cooked identically in both places, and are often seasoned using fish sauce, garnished with bean sprouts, and served with meat balls and sliced beef. Vietnamese
phở, however, is further garnished with fresh mint, cilantro, basil, bean sprouts, limes, sliced chili peppers and sliced raw beef
; this is especially true of Saigon-style
phở. Furthermore, the broth of
phở is made of beef bones and fresh onion, whereas the Cantonese broth of
fan is made of dried flatfish and other seafood. In some regional varieties, the Vietnamese broth may also be a mildly sweet flavoured by Asian yellow rock sugar, but the Cantonese version is not.
In recent years, there has been also a new theory suggesting that the word
phở comes from a French beef stew dish pot-au-feu
, however this theory is often discarded linguistically. In the Vietnamese language, the word
phở carries a non-flat category, whereas most French loanwords carry a flat tone, sắc or nặng tone, depending on the end consonant except the loanwords are ended with -t, -p, -c, -ch consonants.
Phở does not match this rule.
Vietnamese
phở noodle soup with sliced rare beef and well done beef brisket
Possibly the earliest reference to
phở in English was in the book
Recipes of All Nations edited by Countess Morphy in 1935. In the book,
phở is described as "an Annamese soup held in high esteem...made with beef, a veal bone, onions, a bayleaf, salt, and pepper, and a small teaspoon of nuoc-man."
With the Vietnam war and the victory of the Viet Cong,
phở was brought to many countries by Vietnamese refugees fleeing Vietnam from the 1970s onwards, especially popular in large cities with substantial Vietnamese populations and enclaves such as Paris in France, the West Coast of Canada
, the East and West Coast of the United States, Sydney and Melbourne of Australia, and Hong Kong
