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Vegetable Chop Suey

A stir-fried dish of assorted vegetables cooked in butter with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Vegetable Chop Suey

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the vegetables and cut them into ½ inch cubes.

  2. Mix all the vegetables together, rinse in cold water, and sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Steam

  1. In an agate saucepan, heat 1 heaping tablespoon of butter over low heat.

  2. Add the vegetables to the saucepan and cover tightly.

  3. Steam for 25 minutes without removing the cover, shaking the pan occasionally.

  4. The vegetables should be soft but not mushy, retaining their full flavor.

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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  2. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Onions
Add aromatic flavor and sweetness as they soften during steaming.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the vegetables take on flavor as they steam.

The step that matters

Steaming with the cover on. Keeping the lid tight traps steam so the vegetables cook evenly in their own moisture. Lifting the cover releases steam and lowers the temperature, which slows cooking and can leave some pieces firm while others turn mushy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper. 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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