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Scottish Hotch-Potch

A lamb and vegetable stew with split peas, pearl barley, carrots, turnips, onions, lettuce, green peas, and cauliflower.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Scottish Hotch-Potch

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Make stock with sweet fresh lamb or mutton.

  2. Add the grated and sliced carrots, turnips, onions, lettuce, and parsley to the stock. You should have a full quart of these vegetables.

Cook the hotch-potch

  1. Add a quart of green peas and sprigs of cauliflower, withholding half the peas until near the end.

  2. Add the lamb steaks to the stock, trimming off excess fat.

  3. Boil well and skim carefully.

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

Serve

  1. Serve the cutlets 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. Barley + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together629 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 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

Lamb ribs
Provide the main meat and rich flavour for the broth.
Split peas
Thicken the broth and add body and earthy sweetness as they soften.
Pearl barley
Thickens the broth and adds a chewy texture.
Carrots
Add sweetness and colour to the broth.
Green peas
Add fresh sweetness and bright colour near the end of cooking.

The step that matters

Skim carefully while boiling. Boiling releases fat and fine foam from the lamb into the stock. Skimming removes these, keeping the broth clear and less greasy.

Swap the peas

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

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

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