Name: Savoury Ragout Powder
Ingredients: ½ ounce mustard; ½ ounce allspice; ½ ounce black pepper; ¼ ounce ginger; ¼ ounce nutmeg; ¼ ounce salt; 2 drams place; 1 dram cayenne pepper

Why it works: Allspice and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,331 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Savoury Ragout Powder

Ingredients

Directions

Grind and sift the mustard, allspice, black pepper, ginger, nutmeg, and salt until fine.
Add the place and cayenne pepper, then pound them in a mortar.
Pass the mixture through a fine sieve and bottle for use.
For better results, dry the spices in a Dutch oven over gentle heat before grinding.

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.

Allspice + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,331 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Allspice + gingertop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,620 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,928 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).
Ginger + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,324 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,395 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Mustard: Adds sharp, pungent flavor that gives the powder its savory bite.
Allspice: Contributes a warm, aromatic flavor that rounds out the blend.
Black pepper: Provides a pungent, sharp heat and aroma.
Ginger: Adds warm, aromatic spice notes.
Cayenne pepper: Supplies direct heat from capsaicin, the compound that makes chilies hot.

The step that matters

Grinding and sifting to an even fine powder. Spices grind unevenly, leaving coarse pieces that taste harsher or weaker than the rest. Sifting through a fine sieve removes these particles so the flavor is consistent in every pinch.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (allspice, pepper, ginger, nutmeg):

Carrotfits better
Parsnipfits better
Capsicumfits better
Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against allspice, pepper, ginger, nutmeg. 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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Savoury Ragout Powder