onions. The mix depends on regional traditions, as well as individual recipes. The vegetables used are cold-climate roots and bulbs with long shelf lives. act as herbs and impart hearty, strong flavors to the soup or sauce, providing a foil for other strong tasting ingredients such as dried peas and beans or pot roast. Large chunks of vegetables are slow cooked to make flavorful soups and stocks, and are discarded when the vegetables have given up most of their flavor. Finely chopped are browned in fat and used as a basis for a finished sauce. The vegetables may also be cooked long enough until they fall apart, and may become part of the sauce or pureed to form the sauce. Italian In Italian cuisine, in a particular type of , onions, carrots and celery are chopped to form a , and then slowly cooked in butter or olive oil, becoming . It is used as the base for most pasta sauces, such as (ragout), but occasionally it can be used as the base of other dishes, such as sauteed vegetables. For this reason, it is a fundamental component in Italian cuisine. It may also contain garlic, shallot, or leek. According to the Italian restaurateur Benedetta Vitali, means 'underfried' and describes it as "a preparation of lightly browned minced vegetables, not a dish by itself." At one time it was called "false ragout", because was thought to vaguely recall the flavor of meat sauce. Polish is the Polish word for soup vegetables or greens. The word literally means "Italian stuff" because Queen Bona Sforza, who was Italian and married Polish King Sigismund I the Old in 1518, introduced this concept to Polish cuisine. A may consist of carrots, parsnips or parsley root, celery root or celeriac, leeks, and savoy or white cabbage leaves, and sometimes celery leaves and flat-leaf parsley. The most typical, packaged combination is celery root, parsley root, carrots, and leeks. is usually cut up to uniform size and boiled to form a flavor base for soups and stews. See also Epis References External links 'Mirepoix', entry in The Food Timeline Food ingredients French cuisine Culinary terminology Celery Carrot dishes Onion-based foods