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Macedoine De Legumes Jardiniere

A stew of mutton cutlets with turnip, carrot, onions, and optional peas, beans, or potato, simmered in butter and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Macedoine De Legumes Jardiniere

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the turnip and carrot into small shapes, not larger than a filbert, and leave the onions whole.

Make the gravy and braise

  1. In a stewpan, melt the butter and brown the mutton cutlets and onions on both sides.

  2. Add a pinch of sugar to help brown the onions quickly.

  3. Remove the cutlets and onions, then stir in the flour until brown.

  4. Pour in the stock and bring to a boil, then add all the vegetables.

  5. If using, add peas, French beans cut into one-inch lengths, and potato balls.

  6. Season with pepper and salt, cover, and simmer gently for 20 minutes.

  7. Return the cutlets to the pan and simmer for an additional 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve the cutlets in the center of a dish, topped with vegetables, and pour the skimmed gravy over the top.

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 + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton cutlets
Provide the main meat, which browns on the outside and becomes tender during slow simmering.
Butter
Carries the frying heat and adds richness and browning to the meat and onions.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a gravy and helps it brown slightly before the liquid goes in.
Stock
Forms the liquid base of the gravy and carries flavour into the vegetables and meat.
Turnip
Adds body and a mild sweetness as it softens in the simmering gravy.
Carrot
Adds sweetness and colour while softening in the gravy.

The step that matters

Brown the cutlets and onions well in the butter. Browning creates deep flavour through the Maillard reaction. Pale searing leaves the gravy flat, and crowding the pan causes steaming instead of browning.

Swap the peas

The recipe marks peas as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turnip, onion, carrot, butter, mutton, flour, pepper):

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, onion, carrot, butter, mutton, flour, 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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