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Mutton Hotch Potch

A stew of mutton chops simmered with lettuce, turnips, carrots, cucumbers, onions, pepper, and coarse sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and cucumber match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,409 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Mutton Hotch Potch

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Trim the skin and fat from the mutton chops.

Cook

  1. Place the mutton chops in a pot with lettuce, turnips, carrots, cucumbers, and sliced onions.

  2. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt, but do not add water.

  3. Cover the pot tightly and place it in a pan of boiling water.

  4. Simmer for 4 hours, adding more boiling water to the pan as needed.

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. Lettuce + cucumbertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,409 recipes

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

  2. Lettuce + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together526 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + cucumbertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together226 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  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 chops
Provide the main meat, whose juices and fat flavour the stew as it cooks.
Turnips
Add body and a mild sweetness as they soften during the long cooking.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and colour as they soften in the stew.
Onions
Add savoury depth and sweetness as they cook down into the liquid.

The step that matters

Keeping the pot covered and the outer pan topped up with boiling water. Since no water is added to the pot, the vegetables and meat release their own juices. A tight lid traps that moisture, and a steady bath of boiling water provides gentle, even heat for the full four hours, preventing scorching or drying.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, lettuce, turnip, carrot, cucumber, 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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