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Pepper Pot in a Tureen

A hearty stew of beef, ham, fowl, pork, lobster, potatoes, onions, thyme, spinach, and spices simmered in water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

Pepper Pot in a Tureen

Ingredients

Directions

Make the broth

  1. In a large pot, simmer 3 pounds of beef, ½ pound of lean ham, dried thyme, onions, and potatoes in 4 quarts of water until reduced to 3 quarts.

  2. Strain the mixture through a colander.

Finish and season

  1. Add the fowl, pickled pork, lobster meat, and suet dumplings to the strained broth.

  2. Cook until the fowl is tender.

  3. Stir in the pureed spinach and season with coarse sea salt and cayenne pepper.

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. Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  2. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Thyme + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,586 recipes

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

  4. Potato + porktop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  5. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Simmered into the broth to give it a rich, meaty flavor.
Potatoes
Break down during simmering to add body and thicken the broth slightly.
Spinach
Adds color and a green, vegetal flavor when pureed into the finished pot.
Fowl
Cooks until tender in the broth, contributing meat and savory depth.

The step that matters

Cook until the fowl is tender. Fowl is tough and needs slow, gentle simmering to break down connective tissue. Boiling vigorously can toughen the meat and cloud the broth, so keep it at a steady simmer.

Swap the thyme

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, ham, onion, potato, pork, meat, lobster):

  1. Garlicfits about as well
  2. Thymethe original
  3. Celeryfits about as well
  4. Pepperfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, ham, onion, potato, pork, meat, lobster. 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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