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Hotch-potch

A hearty vegetable barley soup with cabbage, carrots, onions, turnip, parsley, herbs, butter, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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

Prepare

  1. In a large pot, bring the water to a boil and add the pearl barley.

  2. Scrape one carrot and set it aside in a little water.

Cook the soup

  1. Chop the remaining vegetables very small and add them to the boiling water along with the butter, pepper, and salt. Ensure there are enough vegetables to thicken the soup.

  2. Boil the soup for 2 hours.

  3. Add the scraped carrot and boil for an additional 30 minutes.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Cabbage + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Barley + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together629 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

Pearl barley
Swells during long simmering, adding body and thickening the broth.
Cabbage
Breaks down during simmering, adding bulk and body to the soup.
Onions
Softens and releases sweetness into the broth as it cooks.
Butter
Adds richness and a rounder mouthfeel to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Chopping the vegetables very small. Small pieces break down during the long simmer, releasing starch and body that thicken the soup. Large pieces stay intact and leave the broth thin.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (barley, cabbage, carrot, turnip, parsley, butter, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against barley, cabbage, carrot, turnip, parsley, butter, pepper. 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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