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Hotch-Potch

A vegetable stew of grated carrots, turnips, peas, onion, and lettuce simmered with butter, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Hotch-Potch

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pulp

  1. Boil grated carrots, turnips, green peas, and sliced onion in enough water to cover them until tender.

  2. Rub the mixture through a coarse sieve to create a pulp.

  3. Return the pulp to the pan and add butter, pepper, and coarse sea salt.

Add the peas and serve

  1. Boil a pint of young peas.

  2. Stew sliced carrot, turnip, and lettuce with the peas until tender.

  3. Mix all ingredients together.

  4. Serve in a deep vegetable dish or 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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + peastop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,994 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Carrots
Add sweetness, colour, and body to the vegetable base.
Turnips
Contribute bulk and a mild, slightly peppery flavour to the base.
Green peas
Add sweetness and a fresh, green flavour to the vegetables.
Onion
Adds savoury aroma and depth to the cooked vegetables.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the pulp.

The step that matters

Rubbing the mixture through a coarse sieve. Pushing the cooked vegetables through the sieve breaks down their cell walls, giving a smooth pulp. Vegetables that are not fully tender will resist and leave lumps, so they must be cooked through first.

Swap the peas

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, onion, butter, 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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