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Macedoine of Vegetables
Cut with a very small vegetable scoop two medium-sized carrots and two ditto turnips; place them in a small saucepan with a pint hot water, one teaspoon salt and let boil for thirty minutes. Strain and replace in the saucepan with two tablespoons cooked green peas, two tablespoons cooked string beans in half-inch lengths, two tablespoons flageolet beans and a few small pieces cooked cauliflower (if at hand). Season with two saltspoons salt and a saltspoon white pepper, adding half ounce good butter. Mix well with a wooden spoon till thoroughly thickened and use as directed.
A garnish rather than a dish in its own right — the recipe ends "use as directed" because it was meant to be spooned around a roast, into pastry cases, or bound with mayonnaise as a salad. The one thing worth changing is the cooking time.
- Thirty minutes is far too longCarrots and turnips cut into pea-sized balls are done in 8 to 12 minutes in salted water. Held for half an hour they collapse into mush that will not hold its shape, which defeats the whole point of scooping them.
- The vegetable scoopA parisienne scoop or the small end of a melon baller, about 1/2 inch. If you have none, cut neat 1/2-inch dice; uniformity matters more than roundness.
- Saltspoon and half ounceA saltspoon is 1/4 teaspoon, so the seasoning is 1/2 teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon white pepper. Half an ounce of butter is one tablespoon.
- Flageolet beansPale green immature haricots, still sold dried or tinned in French groceries. Cooked cannellini or small lima beans stand in acceptably; tinned flageolets need only draining and warming.
- "Till thoroughly thickened"No flour or starch is involved. The instruction most likely means tossing the drained hot vegetables with the butter until it emulsifies with the residual moisture into a light glaze — a minute over low heat, moving gently so the balls stay whole.
- Everything else goes in cookedThe recipe specifies cooked peas, cooked string beans and cooked cauliflower, and the flageolets should likewise be cooked (or tinned) before they join the pan; they are only being heated through. Boiling them again turns the cauliflower to grit and greys the peas.
- YieldAbout two cups — enough to garnish a roast for four to six, or to fill four small pastry cases.
Macédoine is French kitchen vocabulary for a mixture of small, evenly cut vegetables or fruits, and the name is generally traced to Macedonia, the empire of Alexander the Great being proverbially a patchwork of different peoples. By the late nineteenth century it was standard garnish work in professional kitchens: the scooped carrot and turnip balls, the peas, the beans in half-inch lengths, all sized to match so that the finished spoonful looked deliberate. The same mixture could go two ways: buttered and glazed it went around the meat, while cold and dressed it became a salad.