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A Pepper-pot

A stew of mutton, pickled pork, vegetables, and crab or lobster, seasoned with salt and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and spinach match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 427 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

A Pepper-pot

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the vegetables finely.

Stew

  1. In a large pot, combine water, vegetables, mutton, and pickled pork.

  2. Stew until the meat is tender.

  3. Half an hour before serving, remove the shell from the crab or lobster and add it to the stew.

  4. Optionally, add small suet dumplings and season with salt and Cayenne.

Serve

  1. Boil rice separately and serve with the stew.

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 + spinachtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together427 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Lettuce + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together526 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Spinach + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together320 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

Neck of mutton
Provides rich meat flavor and, as collagen breaks down during stewing, a tender texture.
Pickled pork
Adds salty, savory flavor and fat that enriches the broth.
Vegetables
Contribute body, sweetness and aroma to the broth as they soften during stewing.
Crab or lobster
Adds delicate shellfish flavor to the broth in the final half hour.

The step that matters

Stewing the meat until tender. Mutton neck is rich in connective tissue that only becomes tender after long, gentle simmering. Stopping early leaves the meat tough, while a hard boil can toughen the proteins and make the broth cloudy.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, spinach, onion, carrot, turnip, celery, mutton):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, spinach, onion, carrot, turnip, celery, mutton. 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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