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Hotch Potch

A hearty Scottish lamb and vegetable soup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 526 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Hotch Potch

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Bring enough water to a boil to make a sufficient quantity of soup.

  2. Add the lamb, carrots, turnips, cauliflower, lettuce, onions, and half the peas.

  3. Cook for 1.5 hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the lamb, cut it into chops, and return it to the soup if desired.

  2. Add the remaining peas about 45 minutes before serving.

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. Turnip + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together526 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together286 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Cauliflower + lettucetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together151 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Cauliflower + peastop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together313 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Back ribs of lamb
Provides meat and fat that enrich the broth as it simmers.
Green peas
Add sweetness and a tender texture when cooked in the soup.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the broth.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and soften into the soup as it cooks.
Cauliflower
Adds bulk and a mild flavor while softening in the broth.

The step that matters

Adding the remaining peas. Peas added at the start would overcook and turn dull and mushy during the long simmer. Adding them about 45 minutes before serving keeps them bright green and tender-firm.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, carrot, turnip, cauliflower, lettuce, peas, pepper):

  1. Beetrootfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, carrot, turnip, cauliflower, lettuce, peas, 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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