A mirepoix ( ; ) is a flavor base made from diced vegetables cooked—usually with butter, oil, or other fat—for a long time on low heat without coloring or browning. Further cooking, with the addition of tomato purée, creates a darkened brown mixture called . It is not sautéed or otherwise hard-cooked, because the intention is to sweeten the ingredients rather than caramelize them. It is a long-standing cooking technique in French cuisine. When the mirepoix is not precooked, the constituent vegetables may be cut to a larger size, depending on the overall cooking time for the dish. Usually the vegetable mixture is onions, carrots, and celery (either common 'pascal' celery or celeriac), with the traditional ratio being 2:1:1—two parts onion, one part carrot, and one part celery. Mirepoix is the flavor base for a wide variety of Western dishes: stocks, soups, stews and sauces. Similar flavor bases include the Italian , the Spanish and Portuguese / (braised onions, garlic and tomato), a variation with tomato paste instead of fresh tomato of the Eastern Mediterranean and Balkans region, the German (leeks, carrots and celeriac), the Polish (leeks, carrots, celeriac and parsley root), the Russian/Ukrainian or (onion, carrot and possibly celery, beets or pepper), the United States Cajun/Creole holy trinity (onions, celery and bell peppers), and possibly the French duxelles (mushrooms and often onion or shallot and herbs, reduced to a paste). History Though the cooking technique is probably older, the word mirepoix dates from the 18th century and derives, as do many other appellations in French cuisine, from the aristocratic employer of the cook credited with establishing and stabilizing it: in this case, Charles-Pierre-Gaston François de Lévis, duc de Lévis-Mirepoix (1699–1757), French field marshal and ambassador and a member of the noble family of Lévis, lords of Mirepoix in Languedoc (nowadays in the department of Ariège) since the 11th century. According to Pierre Larousse (quoted in The Oxford Companion to Food), the unfortunate Duke of Mirepoix was "an incompetent and mediocre individual ... who owed his vast fortune to the affection Louis XV felt toward his wife and who had but one claim to fame: he gave his name to a sauce made of all kinds of meat and a variety of seasonings". The term is not encountered regularly in French culinary texts until the 19th century, so it is difficult to know what a dish was like in 18th-century