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Olla Podrida

A Spanish stew of beef, ham, bird, vegetables, chickpeas, and spices 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

Prepare the pot

  1. Heat olive oil in a 4‑quart kettle or stewpan.

  2. Add sliced onions and beef, then layer with ham or bacon and the bird.

  3. Include carrots, celery root, parsley root, bay leaf, thyme, garlic, cloves, and mace.

Simmer the stock

  1. Moisten with water or stock and boil until it begins to fry.

  2. Fill with more water or stock and simmer gently for 2 hours.

  3. Strain into a soup pot with fine‑cut vegetables.

Finish and serve

  1. Add garbanzos and chopped peppers, boiling gently until vegetables are done.

  2. Serve the meat in a tureen and pour hot soup over it, accompanied by 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 the long simmer its rich meaty flavour and becomes tender as it cooks.
Garbanzos (chickpeas)
Add body and a firm, starchy bite to the finished soup.
Ham or lean bacon
Adds salty, savoury flavour to the broth as it simmers.
Onions
Build sweetness and savoury depth in the base broth.
Partridge or pheasant
Contributes a gamey, aromatic flavour to the stock.

The step that matters

Boil until it begins to fry. Browning the meat and onions before adding liquid builds deeper, roasted flavour in the stock. Boiling too hard or too long can toughen meat and make the broth cloudy.

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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