Rouille--an appreciation

ROUILLE--HEAVEN ITSELF!

It begins with a rumble in the back of your throat. To say it properly, you almost have to spit out the rest of the word. Out it spills, twisting its way off your tongue, ending with a “whee.” You need to smile to say it properly. Which is only appropriate for a sauce that transports merely excellent dishes to perfection.

Rouille isn’t so much a dish of its own as it is an accompaniment. But it’s one of those oh-so-perfect accompaniments that in moments of gay abandon or less-than-ideal self-discipline, you might just find yourself eating simply spread on a little toasted (or even untoasted good crusty) bread.

Strictly speaking, rouille is a flavored mayonnaise, like its first cousin, aioli. Like its mother, mayonnaise, it is a simple marriage of fat and flavor. And mayonnaise is one of French cooking’s five “mother sauces”—those from which all others are derived. (Interesting side note: mayonnaise wasn’t on the first list, compiled by Careme in the nineteenth century. But Escoffier updated Careme’s list in the early twentieth century and replaced sauce allemande with mayonnaise, the mother of egg-based emulsions.) The ingredients which provide rouille’s distinctive color—the word is French for ‘rust’—are also the keys to its dinstinctive flavor: chili pepper and saffron.

Clifford Wright traces the origins of rouille to the Dark Ages. At that time chili pepper was unknown in Europe—it wouldn’t find its way there until the sixteenth century—so rouille was made with shockingly expensive saffron and still exotic black pepper. Black pepper, an exotic ingredient, wasn’t always available and would sometimes be substituted for with the exotically named, if more common grains of paradise from the west coast of Africa.

(Rouille is most often used to complement bouillabaisse, raising the inevitable linguistic question: is it a coincidence that so many wonderful things end in –aise? Mayonnaise, hollandaise, bearnaise, and so forth. No respectable etymologist would accept this notion, but perhaps it’s not entirely unreasonable to note that the French word aise, as a word and not as a suffix, means joy.)

Rouille caresses even as it explodes on the tongue. Voluptuously rich egg yolk, luscious olive oil...the fat molecules fill the mouth, embracing the taste buds, lulling them into a sleepy vision of heaven. The red pepper is just a step behind, shocking the sense of soothing serenity with an assault of flavor. The mouth is thrown into an uproar. Velvety, rich texture gives way to tingling jolts of heat and assertive flavor. Pleasure and pain, that inseparable couple, expressed in a simple, easy-to-make sauce.

Oil and water: two notorious, unmarriageable, vehicles of flavor. Whether the oil is exploded into countless droplets suspended in water or vice-versa, the tinier and more numerous the droplets, the thicker and creamier the result. The results, known as emulsions, are found in everything from espresso to egg yolks, from cream to butter; they are one of the essential elements of food and food chemistry. On the one hand, they are nothing more than the (temporary) marriage of otherwise incompatible ingredients. On the other hand, their inherent instability carries the potent charm of each individually. Heavy cream, with 70 parts fat per 100 parts water, is far “creamier” than whole milk (which contains a mere 5 parts fat per 100 parts water). Butter has 550 parts fat to 100 parts water.

As any cook knows, emulsions break. The “dissolved” liquid seeks out and recombines with its mates. Drop by drop, previously suspended bits come together and soon the sauce has separated into its components. Food chemists (and even home cooks) can delay or even prevent the inevitable by using stabilizers. But home cooks are limited to a smaller arsenal. Interestingly, one tool in that arsenal—tomato paste—is occasionally used in rouille both to prevent breaking and to add color. Stabilizers work by getting in the way. Large molecules such as protein (which is present in relatively considerable quantity in tomato paste) get in the way, making it much harder for the lonely isolated droplets to find each other and recombine.

The emulsion we know as rouille begins with the mild yet elegant mother sauce, mayonnaise. Because rouille accompanies a fish stew, the acid (vinegar or lemon juice) which combines with the egg yolk in mayonnaise is replaced by broth from the fish stew—whether bouillabaise, cassolette du pecheur, bourride, or some other variant. Where mayonnaise relies on a few simple flavorings (usually just modest amounts of mustard and salt), rouille has a surfeit. Start by adding lots and lots of garlic (stop here and you have aioli), dried hot red pepper to tolerance, salt, and saffron. Each adds a distinctive note; together they join to create an assertive yet well-balanced complement to the myriad flavors of the fish.

Creating a rouille begins by soaking bread crumbs or the crustless innards of a crusty loaf with the fish broth, impregnating the base of the sauce with the flavor of the dish it will accompany. The bread is wrung out and combined with the flavorings: garlic previously mashed to a pulp with a bit of salt, cayenne, and threads of precious saffron. The highly flavored paste is next mixed with the egg yolks, the rich fat of the yolk incorporating the flavors that make this sauce so distinctive. Then, as with mayonnaise itself, olive oil is added. Drop by drop for the obsessively patient, in a thin stream for the careful cooks and, in two or three large portions for the eager and impetuous few. Added too fast, the oil won’t incorporate and the emulsion won’t form. Added too slow, the process creates martyrs to patience.


It was FULL when I started!

Aside #1: Why the bread? It certainly isn’t needed to ensure that the sauce thickens. The emulsification of the oil takes care of that. To help keep the sauce from breaking? Maybe. It’s probably not for the flavor or one wouldn’t be using as neutral a medium as white bread. In fact, no one seems to know. (Clifford Wright responded, in a very thoughtful e-mail, that his research his discovered no apparent reason for the inclusion.)

Aside #2: Some idolaters add tomato paste to the rouille. Ignorance boosts color even as it risks marring the flavor. Although, as noted before, tomato paste can help prevent reluctant emulsions from breaking, careful technique will produce a successful sauce without the need for tomato-based insurance. Good red pepper and saffron should prove more than sufficient to produce a pleasing hue.

The hearty fish soups of Provence and, indeed, the Mediterranean as a whole, offer a palette of flavors. These briny stews offer exquisite flavor with gut-sating richness. And so we begin to understand the symbiotic relationship between bouillabaisse and rouille. They share ingredients...garlic, saffron and the fish broth; but, more subtly, more unexpectedly, both are emulsions. Yes, bouillabaisse itself is an emulsion for it is not simply a heap of fish boiled in flavored water but a heap of fish boiled in flavored water with olive oil added.

Too often the oil simply floats because, as everyone knows, oil and water don’t mix. But they can indeed mix if one boils the water vigorously enough to break the oil into infinitesmally tiny droplets. (And because vigorous boiling can destroy some fish, one must be careful to avoid certain kinds of fish, such as sole or even flounder.) In fact, certain traditional choices of fish betray a deep understanding of food chemistry. Oily fish, such as mackerel and bass, even eel, in addition contributing valuable flavor, promote that magical emulsion by contributing their own oils to the broth.

When the soup is ready, the rouille must be as well. Traditionally, bouillabaisse is served in two steps: first the broth, then the fish. (Contrary to popular belief, bouillabaisse does not usually include shellfish.) The fish is removed and kept warm while the broth is served. The broth itself can be served with rouille and croûtes (slices of baguette either toasted and “buttered” with garlic or fried in a garlic/olive oil mixture) on the side. Or, if you want to be fancy, you can place a dab (okay, a very large dab) of rouille on a croûte island, floating in the broth.

As wonderful, as packed with flavor as a proper bouillabaisse will be, it simply won’t taste right without the rich peppery emulsion that demands its place at the table. Use a little or a lot, according to its heat and your tolerance. You may, when no one’s looking, even try a spoonful (or two) of the rouille all by itself. But bouillabaisse without the rouille isn’t bouillabaisse at all. And once you’ve made your first rouille, you’ll never be without it again.

Gypsy Boy wrote: And once you’ve made your first rouille, you’ll never be without it again.

Thanks for the delightful post, Gypsy Boy! I'l have to try this rouille soon.

I think though that while I have not made rouille (strictly speaking) I have made chile-jazzed aïoli. This is somewhat how you describe it and how I remember it from when I've had it with bouillabaisse.
So now, thanks to your post , I pulled out some recipes and I see that some are without the egg yolk* and use the flesh of chile peppers, softened either by boiling or canning. These also, curiously don't use saffron. Is this a regional difference? In which case would the saffroned versions come from places closer to Spain?

No shellfish in the bouillabaisse? Even lobster and crab? I'll agree to no bivalves.

Thanks again for a great read and inspiring post.

*Further, Child, uses a potato boiled in the fish stock in lieu of the bread. From this I suspect the role of the dispersed starch is what gives the rouille body - but this makes sense in a non yolk based rouille

Gypsy Boy wrote:It was FULL when I started!

Gypsy Boy,

What an informative, motivating and wonderfully written post. I see a visit to Dirk's in my immediate future.

Do you have a preferred bouillabaisse recipe?

Enjoy,
Gary

Thank you for your kind words.

My bouillabaisse, to the extent I rely on a single recipe, is usually based on the one in one of my all-time favorite cookbooks (thank God for Borders clearance tables!): Antoine Bouterin's Cooking Provence. I've never had anything but success with his book. The recipes are clear, straightforward and, best of all, always a success.

Should you wish for more details of his recipe, ask and it shall be given you.

Nice to find this fun thread with Gypsy Boy's excellent ode to rouille, a sauce with which I too have a bit of a love affair. I like my rouille knock-your-socks-off strong, with more garlic than most people can imagine, and enough cayenne to induce a pleasant, slow-building burn.

Gypsy Boy wrote:Rouille caresses even as it explodes on the tongue. Voluptuously rich egg yolk, luscious olive oil...the fat molecules fill the mouth, embracing the taste buds, lulling them into a sleepy vision of heaven. The red pepper is just a step behind, shocking the sense of soothing serenity with an assault of flavor. The mouth is thrown into an uproar. Velvety, rich texture gives way to tingling jolts of heat and assertive flavor. Pleasure and pain, that inseparable couple, expressed in a simple, easy-to-make sauce.

Beautifully said, and perfectly captures my feelings about rouille.


I served rouille with bouillabaise for New Year's Eve, fantastic despite the color being a little off because I used roasted yellow peppers I had in the freezer instead of the customary red variety.

Bouillabaise, garlic toasts, rouille:

Rouille doesn't have to be reserved for bouillabaise alone. It's hard to imagine a better dip for french fries, and it's great on a roast turkey sandwich. This egg salad was really good too:

Rouille Egg Salad:


As Gypsy Boy notes, rouille is easy to make, and so good and versatile that I plan to have a container on hand in the fridge nearly all the time.

Kenny,

If you made regularly, would you continue to use fish stock or gravitate toward something else?

Regards,

Cathy2 wrote:Kenny,

If you made regularly, would you continue to use fish stock or gravitate toward something else?

Regards,

I think maybe 2 tablespoons of stock enters 2 cups of rouille, and with the other very intense flavorings, I don't think it'd make a huge difference even if it was left out entirely. Light chicken stock would probably make for a more versatile version of rouille anyhow.

I made a rouille this summer, based on a recipe that a blogger claimed was inspired by Julia Child, but it had roasted red bell peppers in it. It was tasty -- sharp and punchy -- but it lacked the egg, and that smoothness. I really like the looks of the authentic, pungent, yeller rouille.

Bouillabaise de Chesapeake -- fresh rockfish (caught by me!), Rappahannock River oysters, little neck clams and shrimp, in a crab-tastic seafood stock