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Scotch Soup, or Winter Hatch Potch

A hearty soup of peas, mutton, carrots, turnips, onion, and celery simmered in water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Scotch Soup, or Winter Hatch Potch

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine 4 quarts of water, 1 pound of soaked dried peas, 4 sliced carrots, and 4 sliced turnips in a large pot.

  2. Add 1 whole carrot and 1 whole turnip, then bring to a boil and cook for 2 hours.

  3. Remove the whole carrot and turnip, bruise them, and return them to the pot.

  4. Add the mutton chops, remaining vegetables, pepper, and coarse sea salt.

  5. Simmer slowly for 45 minutes, then add 1 chopped onion and 1 head of celery shortly 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. 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

Dried peas
Break down during long simmering to thicken the soup and give it body.
Mutton
Releases fat and savory flavor into the broth as it simmers slowly.
Carrots
Add sweetness and color while softening into the broth.
Turnips
Contribute mild sweetness and soften to add body to the soup.

The step that matters

Simmering the peas and vegetables. Dried peas need a long, gentle cook to soften fully and thicken the soup. A hard boil can break up the pieces unevenly and leave the broth cloudy, so keep the pot at a slow simmer.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, carrot, turnip, pepper, onion, celery):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, carrot, turnip, pepper, onion, celery. 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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