Name: Vegetable Ragout
Ingredients: Assorted vegetables (as in the recipe for Vegetable Curry); 1 pint good brown sauce; Sliced tomatoes; Croutons of fried bread or small shapes of mashed potato

Why it works: Tomato and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,013 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Vegetable Ragout

Ingredients

Assorted vegetables (as in the recipe for Vegetable Curry)
1 pint good brown sauce
Sliced tomatoes
Croutons of fried bread or small shapes of mashed potato

Directions

Prepare

Prepare and cook the vegetables according to the directions for Vegetable Curry.

Make the ragout

Simmer the sliced tomatoes in the brown sauce for about 10 minutes.
Add the cooked and drained vegetables to the brown sauce.
Heat the mixture until thoroughly hot.

Serve

Serve garnished with croutons of fried bread or small shapes of mashed potato.

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.

Tomato + breadtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,013 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Sauce + tomatotop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together5,469 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Sauce + breadtop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,934 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes: Add acidity and body as they soften into the brown sauce.
Brown sauce: Provides the savoury, thickened liquid that binds the vegetables together.

“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.