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An Excellent Hotch-potch

A stew of peas, lettuce, onions, and meat, simmered together and served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Peas and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,293 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

An Excellent Hotch-potch

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Stew peas, lettuce, and onions in a small amount of water with the beef or ham bone.

  2. Fry the mutton or lamb steaks until nicely browned.

Stew and serve

  1. Three quarters of an hour before dinner, place the steaks in a stew pan and add the vegetables on top.

  2. Stew everything together and serve.

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. Peas + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,293 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  3. Lettuce + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,562 recipes

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

  4. Beef + muttontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Peas + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,460 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

Peas
Add body and sweetness, thickening the broth as they break down slightly.
Lettuce
Contributes moisture and a mild, tender vegetable flavour to the stew.
Onions
Add savoury sweetness and aroma to the broth as they soften.
Beef or ham bone
Releases flavour and gelatin into the stewing liquid, enriching the broth.
Mutton or lamb steaks
Provide the main meat; browning first adds savoury, roasted flavour to the dish.

The step that matters

Fry the mutton or lamb steaks until nicely browned. Browning triggers the Maillard reaction, which builds deep savoury flavour. Steaks that are pale or steamed in the pan lack this flavour, and the stew tastes flatter.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peas, onion, beef, mutton):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, onion, beef, mutton. 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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