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Hotch-potch

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

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

Hotch-potch

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. Bring 2 quarts of water to a boil.

  2. Add 3 pounds of back-ribs of mutton or lamb, trimming excess fat.

  3. Add 2–3 carrots, 2 grated carrots, 3–4 turnips, cauliflower, lettuce, young onions, parsley, 1 pint of peas, and 1 pint of beans.

  4. Boil for 1.5 hours, then remove the meat and cut it into chops.

Finish and serve

  1. Add another pint of young peas, seasoning with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  2. Once the peas are cooked, return the chops to the pot.

  3. Serve the entire dish in a tureen.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Cauliflower + lettucetop 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

Back-ribs of mutton or lamb
Provides the meat and fat that flavour the broth as it simmers.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the broth as they soften.
Turnips
Add a mild, slightly peppery sweetness and firm texture after simmering.
Peas
Add sweetness and a tender texture to the finished stew.
Skinned beans
Add starchy body and substance that thickens the broth slightly.

Swap the onion

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

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

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

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