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Pepper Pot

A hearty soup made with vegetables, cold roast bones, bacon, salted pork, spinach, and minced lobster or crab, seasoned with cayenne pepper and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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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 soup

  1. Add 3 quarts of water to a stewpan.

  2. Add celery, turnips, carrots, and lettuces.

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

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

Finish and season

  1. Boil the spinach and strain it through a colander.

  2. Remove the bones from the soup and add the spinach and minced lobster or crab.

  3. Season with cayenne pepper and salt to taste.

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

Bacon
Adds smoky, savoury fat that flavours the broth as it stews.
Salted pork
Contributes salt and rich fat that deepen the broth's savoury flavour.
Bones of cold roast meat
Release gelatin and meat flavour into the water, giving the soup body.
Spinach
Adds leafy vegetable flavour and colour, thickened lightly once strained.
Lobster or crab meat
Adds delicate sweet seafood flavour to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Skimming when the soup first boils. Skimming removes foam and impurities that rise as the meat heats, keeping the broth clear and clean-tasting rather than cloudy or scummy.

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.

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