diff --git a/server-ce/Dockerfile-base b/server-ce/Dockerfile-base
index 7fa917713a..1ab78d93cd 100644
--- a/server-ce/Dockerfile-base
+++ b/server-ce/Dockerfile-base
@@ -72,21 +72,31 @@ RUN mkdir -p /opt/quarto-extensions \
 # Install TeX Live (for compiling .tex projects with latexmk)
 # -----------------------------------------------------------------------
 # Verso compiles .qmd with Quarto and .tex with latexmk; both engines live
-# side by side. We install (almost) all of texlive-full, excluding the -doc
-# and -lang- packages to keep the download from being needlessly huge while
-# still providing a complete LaTeX toolchain (latexmk, xetex, lualatex,
-# biber, texcount, chktex, synctex, etc.).
+# side by side. Rather than (almost) all of texlive-full — which pulls in
+# every CTAN package and takes ~20 min to build — we install a curated set
+# of meta-packages covering the vast majority of real documents: the latex
+# base/recommended/extra collections, recommended fonts, science/math
+# packages, both alternative engines (xetex, luatex), and bibliography
+# tooling. This is a few GB smaller and noticeably faster to build.
+#
+# If a document needs a package not included here, add the relevant
+# texlive-* collection below (e.g. texlive-fonts-extra, texlive-publishers,
+# texlive-humanities) and rebuild. We deliberately omit inkscape, whose GTK
+# GUI dependency tree is large and only needed for auto SVG->PDF conversion.
 # -----------------------------------------------------------------------
 RUN apt-get update \
-&&  apt-cache depends texlive-full \
-      | grep "Depends: " \
-      | grep -v -- "-doc" \
-      | grep -v -- "-lang-" \
-      | sed 's/Depends: //' \
-      | xargs apt-get install -y --no-install-recommends \
 &&  apt-get install -y --no-install-recommends \
-      texlive-xetex texlive-luatex texlive-bibtex-extra biber \
-      texlive-extra-utils latexmk chktex fontconfig inkscape python3-pygments \
+      texlive-latex-base \
+      texlive-latex-recommended \
+      texlive-latex-extra \
+      texlive-fonts-recommended \
+      texlive-plain-generic \
+      texlive-science \
+      texlive-xetex \
+      texlive-luatex \
+      texlive-bibtex-extra \
+      texlive-extra-utils \
+      latexmk biber chktex fontconfig python3-pygments \
 &&  rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*