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Macedoine of Vegetables

A cooked medley of diced carrots, turnips, peas, asparagus, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, and French beans in a butter, sugar, and salt broth.

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 ↓

Macedoine of Vegetables

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Scrape and smooth the carrots and turnips.

  2. Shape the carrots and turnips into olive and filbert shapes using a vegetable scoop.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil the shaped vegetables in broth or water with butter, sugar, and salt until done.

  2. Drain the vegetables and place them in a serving dish with cooked green peas, asparagus peas, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, and diamond-shaped French beans.

  3. Add thick white sauce, pepper, and salt, then toss lightly over heat.

  4. Serve immediately.

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. Asparagus + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together163 recipes

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

  4. Turnip + asparagustop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together328 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Peas + asparagustop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together808 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Carrots
Hold their shape when boiled and add color and natural sweetness.
Turnips
Add firm texture and a mild, slightly peppery flavor to the mix.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded flavor to the cooking liquid and vegetables.
Thick white sauce
Binds the vegetables together and coats them with a creamy texture.

The step that matters

Boil the shaped vegetables until done. Root vegetables cook at different rates, and overcooking softens the carved shapes and makes them mushy. Test the carrots and turnips with a fork and drain as soon as they are tender, since they keep cooking in residual heat.

Swap the brussels sprouts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, butter, sugar, peas, asparagus, cauliflower):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Brussels sproutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, butter, sugar, peas, asparagus, cauliflower. 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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