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Macedoine Op Vegetables, American Style

A hearty American-style vegetable stew with carrots, beets, parsnips, celeriac, turnips, onions, broth, mustard, and glazed onions.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsnip and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 590 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Macedoine Op Vegetables, American Style

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Lightly fry the chopped onion in the melted butter.

  3. Parboil the carrots, beets, parsnips, celeriac, and turnips separately for a few minutes.

  4. Drain the parboiled vegetables.

  5. Add the drained vegetables to the saucepan.

Cook the stew

  1. Add enough broth to cook the vegetables in the saucepan.

  2. Season the vegetables with salt.

  3. Season the vegetables with pepper.

  4. Cook the vegetables slowly until done.

  5. Prepare the small white glazed onions separately.

  6. Add the glazed onions to the vegetables.

Finish and serve

  1. Reduce the gravy.

  2. Stir in the mustard.

  3. Dish the vegetables up carefully.

  4. Pour the gravy over the vegetables.

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. Parsnip + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together590 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,097 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together290 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 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
Adds fat and richness, and helps the onion soften and take on color.
Carrots
Contribute natural sweetness and firm texture that holds up during slow cooking.
Beets
Add earthy sweetness and a deep color to the stew.
Parsnips
Add sweetness and a soft, starchy texture when cooked.
Turnips
Add a mild, slightly peppery flavor and a tender bite.
Broth
Provides the cooking liquid that becomes the gravy and carries flavor.

The step that matters

Parboil the vegetables separately. Each vegetable needs a different cooking time, so parboiling them separately keeps firm roots from turning mushy or hard while the others finish cooking.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, butter, carrot, parsnip, turnip, pepper):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, carrot, parsnip, turnip, 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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