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Hotch Potch

A lamb and vegetable stew simmered slowly with parsley, peas, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and carrot 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 ↓

Hotch Potch

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the vegetables: cut the turnips and half the carrots into dice, finely chop the cabbage, lettuce, and onions, and break up the cauliflower.

Make the stew

  1. Bring the water to a boil, then add the diced carrots, turnips, cabbage, lettuce, onions, cauliflower, beans, and half the peas along with a little salt.

  2. Boil for 2.5 hours, then add the lamb cut into chops, the remaining peas, seasoning, sugar, and grated carrot.

  3. Simmer for an additional 1.5 hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the chopped parsley and serve in a hot tureen.

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. Parsley + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Cabbage + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Parsley + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 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

Neck of lamb
Its connective tissue softens during long cooking, enriching the broth and giving the meat a tender bite.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and a firm texture that holds up to long simmering.
Peas
Contribute sweetness and a soft, bright texture to the finished stew.
Turnips
Add a mild, slightly peppery sweetness and soften as they cook into the broth.
Broad beans
Add body and a starchy, creamy texture to the stew.

The step that matters

Keeping the long simmer gentle. A steady, low simmer lets the lamb's connective tissue break down slowly into tender meat and a richer broth. A hard boil toughens the meat and breaks the vegetables apart, leaving a cloudy, mushy stew.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, parsley, carrot, cabbage, turnip, lettuce, onion):

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Beansfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, parsley, carrot, cabbage, turnip, lettuce, onion. 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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