A pale stew of chicken or fish and cut vegetables in a broth bound with egg yolk and cream. Ghent's dish, adopted across French Flanders and still on Lille cards.
Waterzooi comes from Ghent, and the second half of the name traces to Middle Dutch words for boiling. It began as a fish stew, made with burbot from the rivers around the city, and turned to chicken when the water grew too polluted for the fish to survive. Charles V is recorded as eating the rich version even while suffering from gout. It crossed the border with everything else Flemish and now sits on brasserie cards in Lille, usually as chicken, occasionally as the original fish.
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