Skip to main content
Main

Scotch Hotch-Potch

A lamb and vegetable stew with peas, served in a hotch-potch.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Scotch Hotch-Potch

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the ribs of lamb into small steaks, trimming off excess fat.

  2. Make a stock with sweet fresh mutton.

  3. Add the lamb steaks to the strained stock.

  4. Grate the zest of the carrots and slice the remaining carrots, turnips, onions, lettuce, and parsley.

Cook

  1. Add the vegetables to the stock, reserving half the peas for later.

  2. Boil well and skim carefully.

  3. Add the remaining peas, white pepper, and salt.

  4. When thick enough, serve the steaks in a tureen with the hotch-potch.

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. Turnip + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together526 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. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Lettuce + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,483 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ribs of lamb
Provide the meat that flavours the stock and forms the main dish.
Carrots
Add sweetness and colour to the broth while their zest adds aroma.
Young peas
Add sweetness and soft texture, with half added later to keep their freshness.
Turnips
Add body and mild sweetness to the broth as they cook.

The step that matters

Skim carefully while boiling. Boiling well releases fat and foam that rise to the surface. Skimming them off keeps the broth clear and stops it tasting greasy.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Celeryfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, carrot, turnip, onion, lettuce, parsley, peas. 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.

You might also like

Green PeasGreen Peas229 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesTurnip SoupTurnip Soup43 recipesGreen Peas SoupGreen Peas Soup35 recipes