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Hodge-podge

A hearty stew of mutton or beef with cabbage, carrots, turnip, onions, peas, and barley or rice, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Hodge-podge

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the mutton into chops.

  2. Wash the cabbage and cut it into pieces.

  3. Wash, peel, and cut the vegetables into small pieces.

  4. Wash the rice or barley.

Make the stew

  1. Put the meat into a saucepan with the cold water.

  2. Bring to a boil.

  3. Skim off any foam.

  4. Add the barley and all the vegetables except the peas.

  5. Reduce heat and cook slowly for two hours.

  6. Add the peas or beans and seasoning.

  7. Cook slowly for another half-hour.

Serve

  1. Serve.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Cabbage + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + barleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together629 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 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

Neck of mutton or shin of beef
Gives the stew its main meat flavour and, as it cooks slowly, becomes tender.
Pearl barley or rice
Thickens the broth as its starch releases during the long simmer.
Onions
Add sweetness and savoury depth to the broth as they soften.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the stew as they soften.
Green peas or broad beans
Add a fresh, green sweetness and tender texture, added late so they stay bright.

The step that matters

Skim off any foam. Foam that rises as the water heats contains impurities and proteins that can make the broth cloudy and taste scummy if left in.

Swap the peas

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, cabbage, carrot, turnip, onion, barley, 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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