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Pepper Pot

A Caribbean stew of mutton or fowl with sweet salt pork, vegetables, lobster, rice, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 broth

  1. In a large pot, stew the mutton or fowl with the sweet salt pork in 3 quarts of water until tender.

  2. Skim off any fat that rises to the surface.

Add vegetables and rice

  1. Add seasonal vegetables, cut into small pieces, and cook until nearly done.

  2. Stir in the lobster meat and soaked rice.

  3. Season with cayenne pepper to taste.

Finish with dumplings

  1. If desired, add suet dumplings on top and cook until they are done.

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. Lettuce + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Spinach + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together870 recipes

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

  5. Peas + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,293 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton or fowl
Releases flavour and body into the broth as it stews until tender.
Sweet salt pork
Adds fat and savoury depth to the broth as it cooks.
Soaked rice
Thickens the soup slightly as its starch releases during cooking.
Lobster meat
Adds sweet, delicate seafood flavour and tender texture to the soup.

The step that matters

Skim off the fat. Fat rising from the stewing meat can make the broth greasy and heavy. Removing it before adding vegetables and rice keeps the soup clean-tasting.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, pork, onion, lettuce, spinach, celery, carrot):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, pork, onion, lettuce, spinach, celery, carrot. 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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