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An Excellent Hotch-potch

A stew of peas, lettuce, onions, lamb steaks, and a beef or ham bone, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and lamb match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 896 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

An Excellent Hotch-potch

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a pot, stew peas, lettuce, and onions with a little water and the beef or ham bone.

  2. Fry the lamb steaks until nicely browned.

Stew and serve

  1. Three quarters of an hour before dinner, place the steaks in a stew pan and add the vegetables on top.

  2. Stew everything together 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. Beef + lambtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together896 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

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

  3. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  4. Lettuce + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,562 recipes

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

  5. Lettuce + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lamb steaks
Provide the main meat, and browning them first adds savory flavor through the Maillard reaction.
Beef or ham bone
Releases flavor and gelatin into the stewing liquid, giving the broth body and savoriness.
Peas
Add starch and natural sweetness, helping thicken the stew as they break down.
Onions
Soften and turn sweet during slow stewing, building the flavor base of the dish.
Lettuce
Wilts into soft, tender pieces and adds moisture to the stew.

The step that matters

Adding the steaks 45 minutes before dinner. Lamb steaks cook quickly and become tough if overcooked, while the vegetables need a longer stew to soften. Timing the addition keeps the meat tender and the vegetables fully cooked when served.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, lettuce, onion, lamb, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, lettuce, onion, lamb, 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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