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Hotch-potch

A beef stew with carrots, onions, celery, turnips, cauliflower, and a butter‑flour gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Hotch-potch

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stew

  1. Cut the beef into 2‑inch square pieces and place in a stewpan with fat scraps, water, and beer.

  2. Bring to a boil, then add carrots, onions, celery, turnips, and cauliflower.

  3. Cover and simmer gently for 3 hours.

Make the gravy

  1. In a separate saucepan, melt butter and mix in flour until smooth.

  2. Let the mixture brown, then dilute with some broth and season with ketchup.

  3. Add this mixture to the stew and bring to a boil again.

  4. Season with pepper and salt to taste.

Serve

  1. Serve in a large dish with meat in the center, vegetables around, and gravy over all.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  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. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + turniptop 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

Beef
Provides the meat that becomes tender during long, gentle simmering.
Butter
Melted fat that carries the flour and adds richness to the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as it cooks with the butter and broth.
Beer
Adds liquid and malty flavour to the stewing liquid.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body to the stew as they soften.
Onions
Build savoury depth and flavour in the stewing liquid as they soften.

The step that matters

Browning the butter and flour roux. Letting the flour cook in the butter until it browns gives the gravy a deeper colour and nutty flavour, and stirring keeps it smooth. Adding liquid too early or skipping the browning leaves the gravy pale and floury.

Swap the cauliflower

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, beer, carrot, onion, celery, turnip, butter):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Cauliflowerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, beer, carrot, onion, celery, turnip, butter. 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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