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Bouillabaisse a LA Marseillaise

A fish stew from Marseille made with assorted fish, onions, tomatoes, lemon, sherry, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Turbot and whiting share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 33 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Bouillabaisse a LA Marseillaise

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. In a large, flat stew pan, heat the olive oil over medium heat.

  2. Add the sliced onions and fry until pale brown.

Build the pot

  1. Place the fish pieces in the pan and add enough warm water to cover them.

  2. Sprinkle the salt, pepper, bay leaf, diced lemon, and diced tomatoes over the fish.

  3. Pour in the sherry or light wine and add the peppercorns.

Simmer

  1. Simmer gently until the fish is cooked through.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Turbot + whitingtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together33 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Turbot + lobstertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together163 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  3. Whiting + lobstertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together73 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Onion + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Turbot + crayfishtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Fish
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender and flaky as it cooks.
Onions
Browning in the oil builds a sweet, savoury base for the broth.
Tomatoes
Add moisture and acidity that brighten the broth.
Sherry or light wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the broth.
Lemon
Contributes bright acidity and citrus aroma to the broth.

The step that matters

Simmer gently until the fish is cooked through. A gentle simmer cooks the fish evenly without breaking it apart. A hard boil toughens fish proteins and can make delicate pieces fall apart and cloud the broth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (olive, fish, turbot, whiting, lobster, crayfish, pepper):

  1. Tomatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, fish, turbot, whiting, lobster, crayfish, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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