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Macedoine of Vegetables, Mexican Style

A Mexican-style cooked vegetable dish with artichokes, peas, beans, string beans, asparagus, bell peppers, lettuce, onion, ham, and broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Artichoke and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 101 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Macedoine of Vegetables, Mexican Style

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and lightly fry the chopped onion.

  2. Add the finely chopped ham and cook for 10 minutes.

  3. Sprinkle the flour over the mixture and cook for a few minutes.

  4. Pour in the broth and stir until it boils.

  5. Add the faggot of parsley, thyme, and bay leaf.

Cook the vegetables

  1. Once it is boiling slowly, add the prepared vegetables and season with salt and pepper.

  2. Cover the saucepan and cook until the vegetables are tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the faggot and carefully dish up the vegetables.

  2. Reduce the sauce with essence of truffles and pour it over the vegetables.

  3. Garnish with small pieces of toasted bread.

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. Artichoke + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together101 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Artichoke + asparagustop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together165 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Beans + asparagustop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together292 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Beans + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together500 recipes

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

  5. Artichoke + beanstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together154 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Artichoke bottoms
Provide the main tender body and mild flavor of the macedoine.
Ham
Adds savory, salty depth to the broth-based sauce as it cooks with the onion.
Butter
Carries the onion's flavor and enriches the base before the flour is added.
Flour
Thickens the broth into a light sauce that clings to the vegetables.
Broth
Forms the cooking liquid and body of the sauce for the vegetables.
Lettuce
Adds soft, tender leaves that absorb the sauce as they braise.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce with flour. Flour must cook for a few minutes after it is added, otherwise it tastes raw and does not thicken evenly when the broth is poured in.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (artichoke, peas, beans, asparagus, pepper, lettuce, butter):

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against artichoke, peas, beans, asparagus, pepper, lettuce, butter. 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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