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Macedoine of Vegetables, Spanish Style

A Spanish-style vegetable stew with onions, bell peppers, tomatoes, eggplant, string beans, and okra garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Eggplant and okra share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 39 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Macedoine of Vegetables, Spanish Style

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a saucepan, heat the sweet oil and lightly fry the sliced onions.

  2. Add the sliced bell peppers and simmer for a few minutes.

Cook the stew

  1. Stir in the quartered tomatoes and sliced eggplant, cooking until moisture is reduced.

  2. Add the boiled string beans and season with salt, pepper, and red pepper.

Serve

  1. Serve in a vegetable border and garnish with boiled okra.

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. Eggplant + okratop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together39 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Beans + okratop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together66 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + beanstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,713 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + eggplanttop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together651 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Tomato + okratop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together327 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

White onions
Soften and sweeten as they fry, building the base flavor of the stew.
Tomatoes
Break down into juice that forms the body of the stew and adds acidity.
Eggplant
Soaks up cooking liquid and turns soft and creamy as it simmers.
Bell peppers
Soften during simmering and contribute sweetness and vegetable texture.
Sweet oil
Carries heat evenly and fries the onions, adding richness to the stew.

The step that matters

Reducing the moisture from the tomatoes and eggplant. If the liquid is not cooked down, the stew stays watery and bland. Reducing it concentrates flavor and gives the vegetables a thicker, spoonable texture.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, tomato, eggplant, beans, okra):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, tomato, eggplant, beans, okra. 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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