Skip to main content
Main

Pepper Pot

A hearty soup made with water, celery, turnips, carrots, lettuce, bones, bacon, salted pork, spinach, lobster or crab, and seasoned with cayenne pepper and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lettuce and spinach match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 427 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Pepper Pot

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Combine 3 quarts water with chopped celery, turnips, carrots, and lettuce in a large pot.

  2. Add the bones of cold roast meat, bacon, and salted pork.

  3. Stew gently until the meat is tender, skimming the surface when it first boils.

Add the spinach

  1. Boil the spinach until tender.

  2. Rub the spinach through a colander.

  3. Remove the bones from the soup.

  4. Stir in the spinach and minced lobster or crab.

Season and serve

  1. Season with cayenne pepper and coarse sea salt to taste.

  2. Optionally, add suet dumplings or jowl based on your preference.

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. Lettuce + spinachtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together427 recipes

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

  2. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Turnip + spinachtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together320 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

Bones of cold roast meat
Gelatin from the bones gives the broth body and a richer mouthfeel.
Bacon
Rendered fat and smoky salty flavour season the broth from the start.
Salted pork
Salt-cured pork adds savoury depth and fat that carries flavour through the soup.
Spinach
Rubbed through a colander, it thickens the broth slightly and adds green colour and earthy flavour.
Lobster or crab
Adds delicate sweet seafood flavour, stirred in late so it stays tender.

The step that matters

Stew gently until the meat is tender. A gentle simmer keeps the broth clear and the meat tender. Hard boiling emulsifies fat into the liquid, clouds it, and toughens the meat. Skimming during the first boil removes scum that would otherwise muddy the soup.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turnip, carrot, lettuce, meat, pork, spinach, pepper):

  1. Parsleyfits about as well
  2. Celerythe original
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Marjoramfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, carrot, lettuce, meat, pork, spinach, pepper. 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.

You might also like

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipes