Skip to main content
Main

Hotch Potch

A hearty stew of mutton with onions, carrots, turnip, cauliflower, peas, lettuce, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Hotch Potch

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the mutton into neat pieces.

  2. Place the mutton in a stewpan with 1 teaspoon of salt and the cold water.

  3. Bring slowly to a boil. Skim off any foam.

  4. Finely shred the lettuce, cutting the filaments across to shorten them.

  5. Remove the stalk from the cauliflower and break it into small sprigs.

  6. Dice the turnip, carrot, and onion.

Simmer and finish

  1. Let the meat simmer gently for about 1 hour.

  2. Add the onion, carrot, and lettuce.

  3. Simmer for another 30 minutes.

  4. Add the turnip, peas, and cauliflower.

  5. Cook slowly for about 1 hour or until all vegetables are tender.

  6. Stir in the chopped parsley. Season to taste.

  7. 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 + 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. Cauliflower + lettucetop 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

Mutton
Provides the main meat flavour as it simmers into the broth.
Lettuce
Softens during long simmering, adding body and a mild vegetable flavour.
Peas
Add sweetness and a tender texture to the finished stew.
Cauliflower
Softens into tender pieces that thicken the broth slightly as they cook.

The step that matters

Skim off any foam. Foam rising as the water heats carries impurities and fat that would cloud the broth and taste greasy if left in.

Swap the onion

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

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

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

Mutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesGreen PeasGreen Peas229 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesHaricot MuttonHaricot Mutton59 recipes