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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, then pulp 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, and boil for an additional 15 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve hot.

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

Mutton loin
Provides the meat and rich savoury flavour as it simmers into the broth.
Peas
Pulped into the broth, they thicken the soup and add body and sweetness.
Carrots
Add sweetness and soft texture as they cook down in the broth.
Turnips
Soften during simmering, adding mild sweetness and body to the stew.

The step that matters

Boil until all vegetables are tender. Carrots and turnips must cook fully before the pulped peas go in; undercooked root pieces stay firm and firm up the broth's texture unevenly.

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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