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Hodge-podge

A mutton stew with carrots, turnips, onions, cabbage, and optional peas and grated carrot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 526 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Hodge-podge

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the mutton into small pieces.

  2. Place the mutton in a stewpan with cold water, salt, sugar, and pepper.

Simmer

  1. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 1 hour, skimming as needed.

  2. Wash and chop the carrot, turnips, onions, and cabbage lettuces.

  3. Add the chopped vegetables to the pot and simmer until done.

Finish and serve

  1. If in season, add green peas and grated carrot before serving.

  2. Serve the meat with the vegetables.

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. Turnip + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together526 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + cabbagetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Cabbage + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together622 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Provides the meat and rich flavour that the broth is built around.
Turnips
Soften during simmering and add a mildly sweet, earthy flavour to the stew.
Onions
Soften during simmering and add savoury depth to the broth.
Cabbage lettuces
Wilt during simmering and add moisture and body to the stew.

The step that matters

Skimming while the stew simmers. Foam and fat rise to the surface as the meat cooks. Skimming them keeps the broth clear and less greasy, and it stops impurities from clouding the final stew.

Swap the carrot

The recipe marks carrot as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, sugar, pepper, turnip, onion, cabbage, lettuce):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Mustardfits about as well
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, sugar, pepper, turnip, onion, cabbage, lettuce. 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.

More mutton stew recipes

with Rice 14Irish 9with Carrots 5with Dumplings 4with Lettuce and Peas 4with Turnips 3 See all 234 →

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