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Scottish Hotch-Potch

A lamb and vegetable stew with carrots, turnips, onions, lettuce, parsley, peas, cauliflower, seasoned with white pepper and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Scottish Hotch-Potch

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Make a stock with sweet fresh lamb or mutton.

  2. Grate and slice the carrots, and slice the turnips, onions, lettuce, and parsley.

  3. Combine all vegetables to make a full quart, then add another quart of green peas and cauliflower.

Cook

  1. Add the vegetables to the stock, reserving half the peas until near the end.

  2. Add the lamb steaks to the stock and boil well, skimming carefully.

  3. Add the remaining peas, white pepper, and salt.

Serve

  1. Serve the cutlets in a tureen with the hotch-potch.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Turnip + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together526 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ribs of lamb
Provides the meat and rich flavour that the stock and broth are built on.
Carrots
Add sweetness and colour to the broth.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and soft body to the vegetables.
Green peas
Add sweetness and a fresh, tender texture to the finished broth.

The step that matters

Skimming the boiling stock. Boiling lamb releases foam and fat that cloud the broth and taste greasy if left in. Skimming carefully as it boils keeps the broth clear and clean-flavoured.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, carrot, turnip, lettuce, parsley, peas, cauliflower. 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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