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Olla Podrida

A hearty Spanish stew of beef, ham, partridge, chickpeas, and vegetables simmered in stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Olla Podrida

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Spread butter over the bottom of a 4-quart kettle or stew pan.

  2. Layer sliced onions, gravy beef, raw ham or bacon, and the old bird on top.

  3. Add chopped carrots, celery roots, parsley roots, bay leaf, thyme, garlic, cloves, and mace.

  4. Moisten with water or stock and boil down to a glaze.

  5. Fill up with more water or stock and simmer gently for 2 hours.

Make the soup

  1. Strain into a soup pot containing finely chopped carrots, turnips, celery, and leeks.

  2. Add soaked and boiled garbanzos and chopped sweet red peppers.

  3. Boil gently until the vegetables are done.

Serve

  1. Cut the meat into small pieces and place in a tureen.

  2. Pour the hot soup over the meat and serve with bread.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Gravy beef
Slow simmering turns the tough cut tender and gives the broth its rich meaty body.
Onions
Sweetness and savory depth build as they cook down into the broth.
Garbanzos (chickpeas)
Hold their shape during long simmering and add starch and a firm, nutty bite.
Raw ham or bacon
Adds salty, smoky fat that seasons the broth as it renders.
Old partridge or pheasant
Old birds have tougher flesh that becomes tender and flavors the stock during long simmering.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the broth as they soften.

The step that matters

Boil down to a glaze before adding the water. Reducing the meat and vegetables until they brown slightly concentrates flavor through caramelization and the Maillard reaction, giving the broth depth that plain simmering would not.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, beef, ham, pheasant, carrot, celery, parsley):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Turnipfits about as well
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, beef, ham, pheasant, carrot, celery, parsley. 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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