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Hotch Potch

A stew of mutton chops, peas, carrots, turnips, celery, and onion simmered in water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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

Prepare the peas

  1. Boil the peas in 1 quart of water until tender.

  2. Pulp the cooked peas through a sieve.

Make the stew

  1. In a saucepan, combine the mutton chops, 1 gallon of water, carrots, turnips, pepper, and salt.

  2. Boil until all vegetables are tender.

  3. Add the pulped peas, celery, and sliced onion to the saucepan.

  4. Boil for an additional 15 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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + oniontop 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

Peas
Pulped peas thicken the broth and give the stew its body and earthy flavour.
Mutton
Provides rich meaty flavour and fat that enrich the broth as it simmers.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and soft texture as they cook down.
Turnips
Contribute mild sweetness and a tender, starchy texture to the stew.
Onion
Adds savoury depth and aroma to the broth as it simmers.

The step that matters

Pulping the cooked peas. Pushing the peas through a sieve breaks down their starch and cell walls, which is what thickens the stew. Peas left whole will not give the same body, and the pulp should be added once the vegetables are tender so it blends evenly into the broth.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, carrot, turnip, pepper, celery, onion):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Lentilsfits better
  3. Chickpeafits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, carrot, turnip, pepper, celery, onion. 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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