Skip to main content
Main

Hotch-Potch, Winter

A hearty winter stew of peas, mutton, beef, carrots, turnips, onions, and celery seed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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, Winter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the dried green peas in water overnight.

  2. Cut the mutton into neat cutlets and the beef into small square pieces.

Cook

  1. In a large stew-pan, combine 4 quarts of water, sliced carrots, sliced turnips, sliced onions, bruised celery seed in muslin, soaked peas, and the whole turnip and carrot.

  2. Add the beef and cook gently for 1 hour.

  3. Add the mutton and cook for another 1.5 hours, or until the peas are soft.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the whole carrot and turnip, beat them to pulp, and return to the pan.

  2. Season with salt and pepper, and 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. Celery + peppertop 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

Dried green peas
Thicken the broth as they soften and break down, giving the stew its body.
Mutton
Adds rich flavour and savoury body as it simmers slowly until tender.
Beef
Adds meaty flavour and gelatin that enriches the broth during gentle cooking.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and earthy flavour, and when mashed they thicken the broth.

The step that matters

Cooking the beef before adding the mutton. Tough shin of beef needs a long, gentle simmer to become tender, while mutton cooks faster. Adding them in this order lets each reach tenderness together.

Swap the peas

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

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

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

You might also like

Beef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesGreen PeasGreen Peas229 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipes