Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓
Mirepoix for Braizing Larded Fillets of Roebuck, Etc
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Cut the veal, bacon, ham, carrots, onions, mushrooms, shallots, garlic, bay leaves, thyme, cloves, mace, and peppercorns into small square pieces.
Cook
In a stewpan, melt the butter and fry the chopped ingredients until browned.
Add the Madeira or sherry and the broth to the stewpan.
Simmer the mirepoix on low heat for about 1.5 hours.
Strain
Strain the mixture through a fine sieve into a basin, pressing to extract all the liquid.
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.
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Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together29,058 recipes
Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).
-
Mushroom + shallottop 4% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,982 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
-
Shallot + garlictop 4% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together2,000 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
-
Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together5,873 recipes
Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
-
Shallot + clovetop 5% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together1,677 recipes
Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Veal
- Provides meaty body and gelatin that enrich the finished braising liquid.
- Butter
- Carries the frying heat and promotes browning of the chopped ingredients.
- Fat bacon
- Adds rendered fat and savoury depth that carries the aromatics.
- Madeira or sherry
- Adds acidity and sweetness, and deglazes flavour from the browned pieces.
- Broth
- Provides liquid that extracts flavour from the vegetables and meats during simmering.
- Onions
- Browning sugars and aromatic compounds build savoury depth in the base.
The step that matters
Frying until browned. Browning the chopped ingredients in butter creates Maillard flavours that the long simmer cannot add later. Pale, under-fried pieces give a flat, grey-tasting liquid.
Swap the clove
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, ham, carrot, onion, mushroom, shallot, garlic):
- Thymefits better
- Parsleyfits better
- Capersfits better
- Clovethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against veal, ham, carrot, onion, mushroom, shallot, garlic. 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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