Name: Marseille Bouillabaisse
Prep time: 30 min
Cook time: 1 h
Total time: 1 h 30 min
Yield: 6 servings
Cuisine: French
Ingredients: 1.5 kg white fish bones and heads, gills removed, rinsed; 1 fennel bulb, sliced, fronds reserved; 2 onions, sliced; 1 leek, sliced and washed; 6 garlic cloves, crushed; 400 g tinned tomatoes, crushed; 1 strip orange peel; ½ tsp saffron threads; 120 ml Pernod or dry white wine; 100 ml olive oil; 2 tsp fine sea salt; 400 g monkfish or gurnard, cut into chunks; 400 g sea bass or bream fillet, cut into chunks; 300 g red mullet fillet; 400 g mussels, scrubbed; 1 large egg yolk, pasteurised (or British Lion-stamped in the UK); 2 garlic cloves; ¼ tsp saffron threads, soaked in 1 tbsp warm water; ½ tsp smoked paprika; 150 ml olive oil; 12 slices baguette, toasted

Marseille Bouillabaisse

Marseille's great fisherman's stew: a saffron and fennel broth built from the bones and heads, poured over firm white fish and served with rouille-slathered croutons. Ambitious, and worth every minute.

1 hr 30 min total Serves 6 servings Hard

Make Ahead and Storage

The broth freezes beautifully for 3 months — make it ahead and the stew becomes a 15-minute dish. Cooked fish does not keep well; poach only what you will serve.

Marseille Bouillabaisse, in preparation
Photograph credit: asht 'aroûb, black scorpionfish, black scorpion fish, bodeč, bouillabaisse, brauner… by Michael Bommerer · CC0 1.0 · Inaturalist

How to Make Marseille Bouillabaisse

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Sweat the fennel, onion, leek and garlic in the olive oil over medium heat for 12 minutes until soft and golden.
Add the fish bones and heads and cook 5 minutes, pressing down to release their juices.
Pour in the Pernod, let it bubble, then add the tomatoes, orange peel, saffron, salt and 2 litres of water. Bring to a simmer.
Simmer uncovered for 30 minutes — no longer, or the broth turns bitter. Skim any scum from the surface.
Press the broth through a coarse sieve, pushing hard on the solids to extract everything, then pass through a fine sieve. You should have about 1.6 litres.
Make the rouille: pound the garlic and saffron with a pinch of salt, whisk in the yolk and paprika, then drizzle in the oil in a thin stream, whisking constantly, until thick like mayonnaise.
Bring the broth to a gentle simmer. Add the monkfish, cook 4 minutes; add the bass, cook 3 minutes; add the mullet and mussels, cover, and cook 3 minutes more until the mussels open.
Serve the broth and fish in wide bowls, with toasted baguette spread thickly with rouille floating on top and the reserved fennel fronds scattered over.

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A Few Pointers

Ask your fishmonger for bones and heads; they are usually free and are the entire point of the dish.
Never boil the broth once the fish is in — a hard boil shreds delicate fillets.
A traditional bouillabaisse uses at least four species. Use whatever is fresh and firm locally.

Why the Method Is What It Is

The broth, not the fish, is the dish. Simmering bones and heads for only 30 minutes extracts collagen and flavour before the bitter compounds in fish bones start to leach out. Adding the fish in order of density — firmest first, most delicate last — means everything finishes at the same moment.

Serving Ideas

A dry Cassis or Bandol blanc from the same coastline · Nothing but the rouille croutons is needed · Follow with a simple lemon sorbet

Sides from the same cuisine on this site: Gratin Dauphinois, French Baguette, Aligot.

Changing the Recipe

An eighth of a teaspoon of garlic powder per clove is the stand-in usually given when you are out of fresh garlic; it will not brown the same way, and it burns easily, so add it with the liquid.
A dry vermouth keeps for longer than an open bottle of white wine and is the closer swap than a random white left in the fridge; for an alcohol-free version, use the same amount of stock with a squeeze of lemon.

Nutrition per Serving

No nutrition figures are given for this recipe: they cannot be worked out reliably from its ingredient list (some ingredient lines cannot be read). Why some recipes have none.

Dairy-Free No Added Sugar