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Savoury Ragout Powder

A spice blend of salt, mustard, allspice, pepper, lemon peel, ginger, nutmeg, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,331 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Savoury Ragout Powder

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Dry the ingredients first for easier grinding.

Grind and sift

  1. Pound all ingredients together until fine.

  2. Sift the mixture through a fine sieve.

Store

  1. Bottle the powder for future use.

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. Allspice + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Allspice + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Coarse sea salt
Provides the savory base and seasons the powder throughout.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavor that balances the warm spices.
Ground black pepper
Contributes pungent heat and aroma that carries through the blend.
Grated lemon peel
Adds bright citrus aroma from the oils in the peel.
Cayenne pepper
Adds direct chili heat to the blend.

The step that matters

Drying the ingredients first. Moisture makes spices clump and turns the grinding sticky, so the mixture will not reach a fine, even powder. Ingredients that are fully dry grind more easily and sift more cleanly.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (allspice, pepper, lemon, ginger, nutmeg):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against allspice, pepper, lemon, ginger, nutmeg. 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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