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Mirepoix for Braizing Larded Fillets of Roebuck, Etc

A mirepoix of veal, bacon, ham, carrots, onions, mushrooms, shallots, garlic, leaves, thyme, cloves, peppercorns, butter, Madeira or sherry, and broth for braising roebuck fillets.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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

  1. Cut the veal, bacon, ham, carrots, onions, mushrooms, shallots, garlic, bay leaves, thyme, cloves, mace, and peppercorns into small square pieces.

Cook

  1. In a stewpan, melt the butter and fry the chopped ingredients until browned.

  2. Add the Madeira or sherry and the broth to the stewpan.

  3. Simmer the mirepoix on low heat for about 1.5 hours.

Strain

  1. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve into a basin, pressing to extract all the liquid.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Mushroom + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Shallot + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Shallot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked 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):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. 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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