Linda Nguyen - Pho Cookbook: Simple, delicious and authentic Vietnamese Pho recipes for your family

Vietnam is a country with a history that spans over thirty-five hundred years, but pho is relatively new. People are not aware of when and how pho came into existence, but they do agree that it happened at the beginning of the twentieth century near Hanoi, the northern capital of the country.

Before 1910, a multivolume effort by Henri J. Oger called Technique du Peuple Annamite (Mechanics and Crafts of the People of Annam, 1908 1910), featured photos of pho street food vendors. The author was a colonial administrator who commissioned wood carvers and artisans to document the life of the people in Hanoi and the countryside.

But, what was the source of the original pho? People believe that before pho gained popularity, it was the food of the people living in the Nam Dinh Province, which was located sixty miles from Hanoi. This village produced a number of pho masters, many of who relocated to Hanoi to open pho shops. We may never know how pho first came into existence, but it is in excellent company almost all favorite foods have a controversy surrounding their origin that fuels imaginations and conversations. It is clear the pho was created when cultures were combined.

There are a number of theories, but a reasonable explanation for pho was first presented in 100 Nam Pho Viet (100 years of Vietnamese Pho). This was a historical essay written by Dung Quang Trinh. There was a lot of interaction between the French, Chinese and Vietnamese in the early 1900s in Hanoi. The French, who had occupied Vietnam from 1880 to 1954, satiated their desire for beef by slaughtering cows, which were traditionally used by the Vietnamese as draft animals. Hanoi butchers sold the bones and scraps. The locals had not developed a taste for beef, and the butchers had to sell their products using different marketing strategies. Vendors, selling noodle soup, realized that this was an opportunity for them to try something new. They wanted to switch the menu in their kitchens to incorporate something new.

Noodle soup was very popular at that time in Hanoi. It was a simple dish broth with rice vermicelli served with slices of water buffalo. In the process, the vendors also traded the round vermicelli with flat rice noodles. This was called noodle soup. Hawkers around the street sold this new noodle soup. Chinese coolies and other workers were the first customers of that pho. Eventually, the popularity of the dish spread across a number of street vendors as their number increased.