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The Royal Parisian Pastrycook

A boiled vegetable medley of carrots, turnips, lettuce, celery, cauliflower, peas, beans, asparagus, artichokes, and cucumber, seasoned with bacon, jelly, broth, and clarified butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 21 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 10,172 recipes mention both. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Scoop out 100 small carrots shaped like olives, then boil in water for 3-4 minutes and cool in cold water.

  2. Scoop out 30 small turnips and boil separately in broth with a little sugar until firm.

  3. Glaze by reducing the liquor.

  4. Boil a cauliflower, 6 ounces of green peas, 6 ounces of garden beans, and 6 ounces of white kidney beans separately in salted water.

  5. Boil half a bundle of asparagus and 6 ounces of green kidney beans cut into strips in salted water.

  6. Boil 4 artichoke bottoms in water with butter, lemon juice, and salt.

  7. Scoop out a cucumber, sprinkle with salt, and drain.

Make the braise

  1. In a separate pot, combine 8 lettuces, 12 heads of celery, larding bacon, jelly, broth, and poultry fat, then cook together.

Finish

  1. Brown in 6 ounces of warm clarified butter.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together10,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together8,001 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Cauliflower + peastop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together313 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Turnip + cauliflowertop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together286 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Turnip + lettucetop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together526 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 richness and helps the vegetables brown in the finish.
Clarified butter
Browns the vegetables at a high heat without burning, adding nutty flavour.
Carrots
Provide sweetness and a firm bite once boiled and cooled.
Turnips
Hold their shape when simmered in broth, adding mild sweetness.
Lettuces
Soften during the braise and add moisture to the dish.

The step that matters

Cool the carrots in cold water after boiling. Plunging boiled carrots into cold water stops the cooking immediately, keeping them firm and bright in colour rather than soft and dull.

Flavor stand-ins for the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, sugar, lettuce, celery, butter, cauliflower):

  1. Beansabout as good a flavor fit
  2. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, sugar, lettuce, celery, butter, cauliflower. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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