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Ratatouille a LA Creole

A Creole-style veal stew with ham, sweet potatoes, okra, and tomatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Garlic and onion 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 ↓

Ratatouille a LA Creole

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gravy

  1. Brown veal bones and trimmings in butter or roast until brown.

  2. Place browned bones in a saucepan with garlic, thyme, tomatoes, and a little boiling water.

  3. Stew gently for 2 hours until the gravy is flavorful, then strain and return to the saucepan.

Braise the stew

  1. Cut veal into finger-length pieces and fry in butter until browned, then add to the saucepan.

  2. Add diced ham, sweet potatoes, salt, and pepper to the saucepan.

  3. Stew gently until veal is tender and sweet potatoes are almost melting, about 1.5 to 2 hours.

  4. Ten minutes before finishing, add the can of okra or fresh okra, trimmed and added 30 minutes before serving.

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. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Garlic + tomatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Garlic + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,608 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Thyme + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,370 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lean veal
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, gentle stewing.
Veal bones
Release gelatin and flavor into the gravy as they stew, giving body to the sauce.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and liquid that help build the body of the gravy.
Sweet potatoes
Break down during stewing, thickening the sauce and adding natural sweetness.
Okra
Releases a natural thickening mucilage into the stew as it cooks.
Ham
Adds salty, smoky depth of flavor to the stew.

The step that matters

Stew gently until the veal is tender. Veal is lean, and high heat or boiling toughens its muscle fibers. A gentle simmer over a long time breaks down connective tissue and collagen, leaving the meat tender.

Swap the sweet potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, clove, garlic, ham, onion, thyme, tomato):

  1. Okrafits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Sweet potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, clove, garlic, ham, onion, thyme, tomato. 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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