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Hotch Potch

A stew of mutton with turnips, carrots, lettuce, cauliflower, and peas.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 526 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Hotch Potch

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and simmer

  1. Combine diced turnips, carrots, chopped lettuces, cauliflower tops, and full-grown peas in a pot.

  2. Boil the mixture gently in 4 quarts of boiling water for 2 hours.

Add the meat and finish

  1. Add the chopped mutton, salt, pepper, and chopped onions to the pot.

  2. Continue boiling for 1.5 hours.

  3. Stir in the green peas and boil for an additional 30 minutes 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. Turnip + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together526 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together286 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Lettuce + cauliflowertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together151 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Cauliflower + peastop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together313 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Provides the meat and rich, savoury flavour that the broth is built around.
Turnips
Hold their shape in long boiling and add a mild, slightly sweet earthiness.
Carrots
Soften during long simmering, adding natural sweetness and body to the stew.
Lettuces
Break down into the liquid, adding moisture and a mild vegetable flavour.
Green peas
Add sweetness and a fresh colour, and are added late so they stay tender.

The step that matters

Adding the green peas at the end. Green peas turn dull and mushy with long boiling. Adding them only for the final 30 minutes keeps their colour and texture better.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turnip, carrot, lettuce, cauliflower, peas, mutton, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, carrot, lettuce, cauliflower, peas, mutton, 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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