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Olla Podrida

A hearty Spanish stew of beef, ham, poultry, vegetables, and chickpeas simmered in stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Olla Podrida

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Heat olive oil in a 4-quart kettle or stew-pan.

  2. Add sliced onions and beef.

  3. Add ham or bacon and the bird.

  4. Add carrots, celery root, parsley root, bay leaf, thyme, garlic, cloves, and mace.

  5. Moisten with water or stock.

  6. Boil until it begins to fry.

  7. Fill up with more water or stock.

  8. Simmer gently for 2 hours.

Finish the soup

  1. Strain into a soup pot with the finely cut vegetables.

  2. Add soaked and boiled garbanzos and chopped red peppers.

  3. Boil gently until the vegetables are done.

Serve

  1. Serve the meat in a tureen.

  2. Pour hot soup over it.

  3. Enjoy with bread.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Olive + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,649 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Gravy beef
Gives rich meaty flavour and body to the broth as it simmers.
Garbanzos (chickpeas)
Hold their shape in the soup and add starchy body and mild nutty flavour.
Onions
Add sweetness and savoury depth to the broth as they cook down.
Raw ham or lean bacon
Adds salty, smoky meat flavour that seasons the whole pot.

The step that matters

Boil until it begins to fry. The meat and onions must brown lightly before liquid is added. Browning builds deeper flavour through the Maillard reaction, while boiling too hard or too long can toughen the meat and reduce the broth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (olive, beef, ham, pheasant, carrot, celery, parsley):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, beef, ham, pheasant, carrot, celery, parsley. 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.

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