Rutabaga be augmented with black pepper. Onions are never used. Regionally, neeps are a common ingredient in soups and stews. In England, swede is boiled together with carrots and served either mashed or pureed with butter and ground pepper. The flavored cooking water is often retained for soup, or as an addition to gravy. Swede is an essential vegetable component of the traditional Welsh lamb broth called cawl and Irish stew as eaten in England. Swede is also a component of the popular condiment Branston Pickle. The swede is also one of the four traditional ingredients of the pasty originating in
Mirepoix (cuisine) 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 flavour base for a wide variety of Western dishes: stocks, soups, stews and sauces. Similar flavour bases include the Italian "soffritto", the Spanish "sofrito", "refogado/sufrito" (braised onions, garlic and tomato) from Portuguese-speaking nations, the German "suppengrün" (leeks, carrots and celeriac), the Polish "włoszczyzna" (leeks, carrots, celery root and parsley root), the US Cajun / Creole holy trinity