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Hotch-potch

A stew of beef or ham bone, lettuce, onions, and mutton or lamb chops seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Hotch-potch

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Stew the lettuce and onions in a small amount of water with the beef or ham bone.

  2. Season the mutton or lamb chops and fry them until nicely browned.

Stew and serve

  1. Three quarters of an hour before dinner, place the chops in a stew-pan and add the vegetables on top.

  2. Stew everything together and serve in a tureen.

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

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

  2. Lettuce + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,562 recipes

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

  3. Lettuce + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

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

  4. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  5. Beef + muttontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Lettuce
Softens into the stew, adding moisture and a mild, sweet vegetable body.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they stew, adding depth to the broth.
Mutton or lamb chops
Browning in the pan adds savoury flavour before the chops stew with the vegetables.
Beef or ham bone
Simmers in the water, releasing savoury flavour into the stew liquid.

The step that matters

Browning the chops. Frying the seasoned chops until nicely browned builds savoury flavour through the Maillard reaction, which the gentle stewing later cannot produce on its own.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, onion, 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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