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Hotch-Potch

A stew of mutton or lamb neck chops with carrots, turnips, onions, French beans, lettuce, cauliflower, peas, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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

Prepare the stew

  1. Stew the mutton or lamb neck chops in a pot for 2-3 hours.

  2. In another pot, combine the stock with carrots, turnips, onion, and French beans; stew until 15 minutes before serving.

  3. Add salt, pepper, shredded lettuce, and cauliflower sprigs to the vegetable stew.

Cook the peas and serve

  1. Boil the peas in salted water with a pinch of soda for 5 minutes or until bright green.

  2. In each serving bowl, place one chop, half a pint of vegetable stew, half a measure of peas, and a tablespoon of parsley.

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. Beans + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together500 recipes

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

  5. Lettuce + cauliflowertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together151 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

Mutton or lamb neck chops
Slow stewing breaks down connective tissue, making the meat tender and rich in flavor.
Stock
Provides the liquid base and savory depth for the whole stew.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the stew as they soften.
Peas
Add sweetness and a fresh, bright color; soda helps them stay green.
French beans
Add tender texture and fresh vegetable flavor to the stew.
Lettuce
Adds soft texture and a mild, fresh vegetable flavor when added near the end.

The step that matters

Adding the peas with soda. Soda raises the pH of the cooking water, which helps peas turn bright green, but too much or too long a boil makes them mushy and soft. Watch the color and stop cooking once they are bright green.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, carrot, turnip, beans, lettuce, cauliflower, 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.

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