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Winter Hotch Potch

A winter stew of peas, mutton chops, carrots, and turnips 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 turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Winter Hotch Potch

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pea base

  1. Boil 2 quarts of water with 1 pound of peas and ½ ounce of butter for 2 hours or until tender.

  2. Pulp the peas through a sieve.

Make the stew

  1. In a separate saucepan, boil 1 gallon of water with 3 pounds of mutton chops, salt, and pepper.

  2. Add 1½ pounds of small-cut carrots and 1½ pounds of small-cut turnips.

  3. Boil until the vegetables are tender, about 2 hours.

  4. Add the strained pea liquor and boil for an additional 15 minutes.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  3. Peas + carrottop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,994 recipes

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

  4. Peas + turniptop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,350 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Pepper + turniptop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,252 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

Peas
Break down into a thickening pulp that gives the stew body and a sweet, earthy flavour.
Mutton chops
Release savoury meat flavour into the broth as they simmer.
Carrots
Add sweetness and soft texture as they cook through.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and a tender bite as they cook.

The step that matters

Pulping the peas through a sieve. Pressing the cooked peas through a sieve removes the skins and breaks down the starch-rich flesh, so the liquor thickens smoothly and the stew has an even body instead of grainy bits.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Lentilsfits about as well
  3. Peasthe original
  4. Chestnutfits about as well

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