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Scotch Soup, or Winter Hotch Potch

A hearty Scottish soup of dried peas, mutton, carrots, turnips, onion, and celery simmered for several hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Scotch Soup, or Winter Hotch Potch

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook the base

  1. Combine 4 quarts water, dried peas, sliced carrots, and sliced turnips in a large pot.

  2. Add whole carrot and whole turnip.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  4. Boil for 2 hours.

  5. Remove the whole carrot and turnip.

  6. Bruise the removed carrot and turnip.

  7. Return the bruised carrot and turnip to the pot.

Finish the soup

  1. Add mutton chops, remaining vegetables, pepper, and salt.

  2. Boil slowly for 45 minutes.

  3. Add chopped onion and celery shortly before serving.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 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

Dried peas
Break down during long boiling to thicken the soup and give it body.
Mutton
Adds rich meaty flavor and fat to the broth as it simmers.
Carrots
Add sweetness and color, and soften into the broth.
Turnips
Contribute mild sweetness and soften into the broth.
Celery
Adds a fresh, aromatic note when added near the end.

The step that matters

Boiling the peas for 2 hours. Dried peas need a long, steady boil to soften fully and release their starch, which thickens the soup. Stopping early leaves them firm and the soup thin.

Swap the peas

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

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

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