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Ratatouille a LA Creole

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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

Prepare the gravy

  1. Brown the veal bones and trimmings in butter in a frying pan or roast them in the oven until browned.

  2. Place the browned bones in a saucepan with garlic, thyme, tomatoes, and a little boiling water, adding 3 pints of liquid.

  3. Fry the onions in butter until browned, then add them to the saucepan, cover, and let it stew gently for 2 hours.

  4. Strain the gravy and return it to the saucepan.

Stew the ratatouille

  1. Fry the veal pieces in butter until nicely browned, turning often to avoid toughening, then add them to the saucepan.

  2. Add the diced ham, cubed sweet potatoes, salt, and pepper; if available, add half a sweet pepper, seeded.

  3. Stew gently until the veal is tender and the sweet potatoes are almost melting, about 1 to 2 hours.

  4. Ten minutes before finishing, add the can of okra; if using fresh okra, add it 30 minutes before removing from heat.

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

Veal
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, gentle stewing.
Sweet potatoes
Break down during stewing to thicken the gravy and add body and sweetness.
Okra
Releases its natural starch during cooking, helping to thicken the stew.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and moisture that form the base of the gravy.
Onions
Browning them in butter adds sweetness and savory depth to the gravy.

The step that matters

Browning the veal pieces. Searing the veal in butter until well browned builds rich flavor through the Maillard reaction. Turning often prevents the meat from toughening or drying on the surface before it goes into the stew.

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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