Skip to main content
Main

Hotch-potch

A stew of peas, mutton, carrots, turnips, celery, and onion boiled in water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Hotch-potch

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pea base

  1. Boil the peas in 1 quart of water until tender, then pulp through a sieve.

Make the soup

  1. In a saucepan, combine the mutton chops, 1 gallon of water, carrots, turnips, pepper, and salt.

  2. Boil until all vegetables are tender.

  3. Add the pulped peas, celery, and onion.

  4. Boil for 15 minutes.

  5. Serve hot.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  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

Mutton loin chops
Provides the meat and rich savory flavour that the broth is built around.
Peas
Pulped into the broth, they thicken it and add body and sweet, earthy flavour.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and soft texture to the soup as they cook.
Turnips
Contribute mild sweetness and a tender, starchy texture to the broth.
Celery
Adds a fresh, aromatic savoury note to the finished soup.
Onion
Adds aromatic depth and savoury sweetness to the broth.

The step that matters

Pulping the peas. Peas must be cooked fully tender before being pressed through a sieve; undercooked peas stay grainy and will not break down into a smooth pulp that thickens the broth evenly.

Swap the peas

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

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

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

More hotch-potch recipes

Winter 5Scotch 4Soup 3 See all 15 →

You might also like

Mutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesGreen PeasGreen Peas229 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipes