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Scotch Hotch-potch

A stew of mutton or beef with peas, cauliflower, lettuce, onion, cucumber, ham bone, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and cucumber match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,409 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Scotch Hotch-potch

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Season the mutton chops or beef steaks with salt and pepper.

  2. Fry the meat in a pan for 10 to 15 minutes until nicely browned.

Stew

  1. In a separate pot, combine the peas, cauliflower, lettuce, onion, cucumber, ham bone, stock, mixed salt and pepper, and Cayenne.

  2. Stew the vegetables slowly for 45 minutes.

  3. Remove the ham bone and add the fried meat beneath the vegetables.

  4. Continue to stew for another 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve in a tureen or deep dish with the gravy.

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 + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,409 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Cauliflower + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together584 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Cauliflower + lettucetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together151 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Peas + cauliflowertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together313 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Peas + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,293 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Mutton chops or beef steaks
Browning in the pan builds savory flavour, and the meat becomes tender during the long stew.
Green peas
Add sweetness and soft texture to the stewed vegetables.
Cauliflower
Softens during stewing, giving the broth body and bulk.
Lettuce
Wilts into the stew, adding moisture and a tender texture.
Ham shank bone
Releases savory flavour into the stock while the vegetables cook.

The step that matters

Browning the meat. Frying the meat until well browned creates deep savoury flavours through the Maillard reaction. Pale meat added to the stew would give a flatter, less rich gravy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, pepper, peas, cauliflower, lettuce, cucumber, ham):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, pepper, peas, cauliflower, lettuce, cucumber, ham. 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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