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Winter Hotch Potch

A hearty stew of carrots, turnips, onions, peas, cabbage, celery simmered in water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Winter Hotch Potch

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the peas

  1. Pick and wash the peas.

  2. Soak the peas in fresh soft water for 12 hours, adding a small piece of soda if desired.

Cook the stew

  1. Combine half of the sliced carrots and turnips, the whole carrots and turnips, peas, cabbage, and onions with 4 quarts of water in a large pot.

  2. Bring to a boil and cook for 2 hours.

  3. Remove the whole carrots and turnips, bruise them well, and return them to the pot with the remaining sliced vegetables.

  4. Simmer gently for 1 hour.

  5. Add the white part of the celery cut into small shreds 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 + cabbagetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  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 green peas
Provide starch and body, thickening the broth as they soften during long cooking.
Carrots
Add sweetness and colour, and soften into the broth during simmering.
Turnips
Contribute mild sweetness and body as they break down into the stew.
Savoy cabbage
Adds texture and a mild, earthy flavour as it cooks tender.
Onions
Build savoury depth and aroma as they cook down into the broth.

The step that matters

Bruising the cooked carrots and turnips. Bruising breaks down the cell walls of the cooked roots so they release starch and flavour into the broth, helping thicken it. Pressing them too lightly leaves the broth thin and the roots whole.

Swap the peas

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, onion, cabbage, 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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