We’ve all seen Dégas’s young lady, sitting in a café, paralyzed with ennui, staring at her glass of green elixir. For most of us, that’s about the extent of it. Few of us have ever seen absinthe much less tasted it. But times are changing and absinthe is newly legal in places it was once forbidden—it’s legal in most of Europe, America, Asia, and Canada. Authentic absinthe should taste of anise but with a bitter background. In old pictures, such as the Dégas, a pierced spoon is set over a glass. A piece of sugar is put in the spoon and water poured over to sweeten the absinthe. Absinthe is always drunk with water, which it immediately clouds in the same way as Pastis.

Absinthe’s formidable (or some would say, notorious) reputation may have come about as a result of a series of murders that happened in Eastern France in the early part of the 20th century. To make a long story short, the murders were eventually blamed on the effects of absinthe and its tendency to drive one mad. Experts have argued whether there’s any truth in this and whether absinthe’s active ingredient, wormwood and its alkaloid, thymol, causes hallucinations or other mind altering experiences.

My own experience began one afternoon in Sicily when I passed a wine and liquor store and noticed in the window an ancient bottle labeled “Thymol Liqueur.” I took this to be a barely cloaked reference to the active ingredient in absinthe. After buying the bottle for 30 Euros and tasting it, everything about it was consistent with descriptions of absinthe—it was green, 130 proof, and tasted like a bitter version of Pernod. It turned cloudy white when mixed with water. The stuff knocked a wallop but failed to produce anything resembling a hallucination. Either absinthe’s reputation is unwarranted or I got sold a fake.

There are recipes that call for absinthe, but because of its bitter notes, Pernod or other kinds of Pastis (such as Ricard) are used instead to give an anise note to certain dishes, especially fish dishes. In the south of France, fish are forever being flambéed in pastis, a brutal treatment for a delicate fish.