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Hotch Potch

A lamb stew with peas, beans, and assorted vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and turnip 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 broth

  1. In a clean saucepan, bring 2 quarts of water to a boil.

  2. Add the lamb, carrots, turnips, cauliflower, lettuce, spring onions, parsley, and 1 pint of peas and beans.

  3. Boil for 1.5 hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the lamb, cut it into chops, and set aside.

  2. Add another pint of peas and season with pepper and salt.

  3. Once the peas are cooked, return the lamb chops to the pot. Heat for a few minutes and serve 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. Lettuce + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together526 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Cauliflower + turniptop 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. 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

Lamb
Gives the broth its meaty flavour and richness as it simmers.
Green peas
Add sweetness and a soft, tender texture to the finished stew.
Beans
Add body and a soft, starchy texture to the broth.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and colour to the broth.
Turnips
Add a mild sweetness and tender texture after long simmering.

The step that matters

Boil for 1.5 hours. A long, steady simmer is needed to break down the lamb and vegetables and draw flavour into the broth. Boiling too hard can toughen the meat and cloud the broth, so keep it at a gentle, steady bubble.

Swap the onion

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

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

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