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Hotch-potch

Hotch-Potch is a mutton or lamb stew with leeks, onions, carrots, turnips, cauliflower, peas, broad beans, and French beans.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Leek and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Hotch-potch

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Cut the mutton or lamb into pieces and boil in salted water, skimming the surface as it boils and adding cold water twice to help remove scum.

  2. Boil slowly for 1 hour.

  3. Remove the back ribs and cut into 1‑inch pieces.

  4. Add leeks, onion, carrot, and turnip to the pot and boil for another hour, skimming as needed.

  5. Remove the carrot and turnip.

Add the vegetables

  1. Add the young turnips, young carrots, cauliflower, peas, broad beans, and French beans.

  2. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

  3. Once the vegetables are cooked, remove the large pieces of meat.

  4. Heat the small pieces of meat in the soup.

Serve

  1. Pour everything into a tureen.

  2. Garnish with chopped parsley and serve.

  3. If the soup tastes bitter, add a pinch of sugar.

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. Leek + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together286 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. Cauliflower + beanstop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together290 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Leek + carrottop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,310 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 or lamb ribs
Gives the broth its rich meaty flavour and body as it simmers.
Leeks
Add a mild, sweet onion-like aroma that deepens the broth.
Onion
Builds savoury sweetness and aroma as it cooks down into the broth.
Green peas
Add sweetness and bright colour, and soften into the soup as they cook.
Cauliflower
Adds texture and mild sweetness as it becomes tender in the broth.

The step that matters

Skimming the surface while the meat boils. Scum rising from the meat is foam of coagulated proteins and impurities; removing it early keeps the broth clear and clean-tasting rather than cloudy or bitter.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, leek, carrot, turnip, cauliflower, peas, beans):

  1. Lettucefits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, leek, carrot, turnip, cauliflower, peas, beans. 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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