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Vegetable Scoops

A mixed vegetable dish cooked in white sauce, seasoned with pepper, salt, tomatoes, gravy, and lemon juice or chili vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and cauliflower match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 286 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Vegetable Scoops

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Cut the carrots and turnips into ¼‑inch pieces or shapes like olives or filberts.

  2. Divide the cauliflower and French beans into small pieces.

  3. Cook the vegetables separately in plenty of salted water until tender, then drain and dry them.

Make the sauce and stew

  1. In a saucepan, combine the vegetables with enough good white sauce to moisten them.

  2. Toss the vegetables lightly in the sauce without breaking them, and heat until hot.

  3. For the mixed vegetables, chop four moderate‑sized onions and fry them in butter or fat until yellow.

  4. Stir in the cold dressed vegetables and heat thoroughly.

  5. Season with white pepper and a little salt, then add sliced tomatoes, gravy, and lemon juice or chili vinegar.

  6. Serve very hot.

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. Turnip + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together286 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Cauliflower + beanstop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together290 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Turnip + beanstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together400 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + beanstop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,443 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Carrots
Hold their shape and add sweetness and colour as they cook.
Onions
Fried until yellow, they add savoury flavour and aroma to the stew.
Good white sauce
Coats the vegetables with a moist, creamy texture that binds them together.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and a fresh, tangy flavour to the stew.
Lemon juice or chili vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the stew.

The step that matters

Toss the vegetables lightly in the sauce. Cooked vegetables are soft and fragile, so stirring them roughly breaks them into mush. Gentle folding keeps their shape while the sauce heats them through.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, cauliflower, beans, sauce, butter, onion):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, cauliflower, beans, sauce, butter, onion. 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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