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Ragout D'olives

A savory ragout of olives, capers, anchovy, and green onions in a buttery sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,550 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Ragout D'olives

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Sauté the chopped green onions and parsley in butter until soft.

  2. Stir in the flour and cook for a minute.

  3. Add the juice, Champagne, capers, chopped anchovy, and pitted olives.

  4. Bind the mixture with a good coulis and season with coarse sea salt.

  5. Degrease and serve with roasted meats.

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. Parsley + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,550 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Capers + olivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,688 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Parsley + olivetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,649 recipes

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

  4. Flour + caperstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,024 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + caperstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Fat that softens the green onions and parsley and carries their flavour into the base.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid so the ragout clings to the olives and capers.
Champagne
Adds acidity and a light, wine-based aroma that brightens the rich sauce.
Anchovy
Contributes savory depth that rounds out the briny olives and capers.
Pitted olives
Provide the main salty, briny flavour and chewy texture.

The step that matters

Stirring in the flour and cooking it for a minute. The flour must cook in the hot butter long enough to lose its raw taste and to thicken smoothly. Undercooked flour leaves a pasty flavour, and adding liquid before it is cooked can cause lumps.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, butter, flour, champagne, capers, anchovy, olive):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, butter, flour, champagne, capers, anchovy, olive. 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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