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Hotch-potch

A hearty stew of beef, veal, mutton, rice, vegetables, and spices simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,668 recipes. Both carry gamma-decalactone, which smells peach, creamy. The science ↓

Hotch-potch

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and simmer

  1. Cut the beef, veal, and mutton into small pieces.

  2. Put the meat in a kettle with the water.

  3. Add the rice, onion, celery, mace, cloves, green pepper, turnips, and carrot.

  4. Cover and simmer gently for three hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Season to taste, then add the green peas.

  2. Cook for an additional ten minutes 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. Celery + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  2. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  4. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Rice + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Lean beef
Provides rich meaty flavour and body to the broth as it simmers.
Veal knuckle
Releases gelatin during long simmering, giving the broth a fuller, silkier body.
Mutton neck
Adds deeper meaty flavour and richness to the broth over the long cooking time.
Rice
Thickens the broth slightly as its starch releases during simmering.
Turnips
Soften during simmering and add mild sweetness and body to the stew.
Green peas
Add a fresh, sweet flavour and bright colour when cooked briefly at the end.

The step that matters

Simmer gently with the lid on. A gentle simmer keeps the meat tender and the broth clear. A hard boil toughens meat proteins and makes the broth cloudy and greasy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, veal, mutton, rice, onion, celery, clove):

  1. Turmericfits better
  2. Pepperfits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, veal, mutton, rice, onion, celery, clove. 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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