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Macedoine of Vegetables

A boiled vegetable medley of carrot, turnip, peas, string beans, and cauliflower, seasoned with butter, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the carrot and turnip into ½-inch dice or fancy shapes.

  2. Mix the diced carrot and turnip with green peas in equal proportions.

  3. Add string beans and cauliflower to the mixture.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil each vegetable separately until tender, then drain.

  2. Gently mix the vegetables together without breaking them.

  3. Season with butter, pepper, and coarse sea salt.

  4. Serve as a garnish for meat or in a vegetable dish.

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. Beans + cauliflowertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together290 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Turnip + beanstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together400 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + beanstop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,443 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Carrot
Adds sweetness, colour and a firm bite that holds its shape after cooking.
Turnip
Adds a mildly sharp, earthy flavour and firm texture to the medley.
Green peas
Add sweetness and a tender texture that contrasts with the firmer root vegetables.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, coating the vegetables and carrying flavour.

The step that matters

Boil each vegetable separately until tender, then drain.. Vegetables cook at different rates, so boiling them separately lets each reach tenderness without some turning mushy while others remain hard.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, beans, cauliflower, butter, pepper):

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Lima beansfits about as well
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, beans, cauliflower, butter, 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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