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Macedoine of Vegetables, Mexican Style

A Mexican-style mixed vegetable stew with ham, broth, and herbs, served with toasted bread garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 ingredients
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Why it works: Artichoke and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 101 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Macedoine of Vegetables, Mexican Style

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and lightly fry the chopped onion.

  2. Add the finely chopped ham and cook for 10 minutes.

  3. Sprinkle the flour over the mixture and cook for a few minutes.

  4. Pour in the broth and stir until it boils.

  5. Add the faggot of parsley, thyme, and bay leaf.

Cook the vegetables

  1. Once boiling, add the prepared vegetables and season with salt and pepper.

  2. Cover and cook until the vegetables are tender.

Serve

  1. Remove the faggot and carefully dish up the vegetables.

  2. Reduce the sauce with essence of truffles and pour it over the vegetables.

  3. Garnish with small pieces of toasted bread.

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. Artichoke + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together101 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Artichoke + asparagustop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together165 recipes

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

  3. Beans + asparagustop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together292 recipes

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

  4. Beans + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together500 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  5. Artichoke + beanstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together154 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Artichoke bottoms
Provide the main tender vegetable body and a mild, earthy flavor to the dish.
Green peas
Add sweetness, bright color, and soft texture to the mixed vegetables.
Butter
Carries the onion's flavor and adds richness to the start of the base.
Lean raw ham
Releases savory flavor into the fat as it cooks, seasoning the whole dish.
Flour
Thickens the broth into a light sauce that coats the vegetables.
Broth
Forms the liquid that cooks the vegetables and becomes the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring flour into the butter and onion mixture. Cooking the flour briefly removes its raw taste and lets it thicken the broth smoothly, so the sauce does not turn lumpy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (artichoke, peas, beans, asparagus, pepper, lettuce, butter):

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against artichoke, peas, beans, asparagus, pepper, lettuce, butter. 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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